


The Pendulum Swing

by Maldoror_Chant



Series: Outlands [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Complete bastardisation of physics, Fiction Fantasy, Fish out of Water, Historical Fantasy, It's based on ancient Assyria and Greece, M/M, Mathematical Magic, Pre-BC history put through a blender, Science Fiction, Slavery mentioned as well, historically accurate issues with women's rights in the background, so anyone who wasn't male and rich was pretty much boned anyway
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-10-26
Packaged: 2020-05-16 05:53:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 32,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19311961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: (The next arc of Outlands)The Romans are in retreat, the Ancients are nowhere to be seen, the war is over, the court of Sura is-... well, that’s still a viper’s nest of intrigue, gossip and backstabbing, but Ryou is a foreigner, an outsider, he’ll stay as much out of it as possible, thank you. In short, everything isfine.Except it’s not, not entirely. If Ryou wants to have a future with Darius in Assyria, there is one more journey to undertake, one more confrontation to get through.





	1. Viper Pit

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next Outlands arc! Almost a year late *kowtows in embarrassment* But I did get it out in final. It’s shorter than I initially estimated, though some of the chapters are long. The next chapter should be out next weekend if all goes well. Enjoy ^__^

_In King Leyam's campaign to rid the Alliance territories of Imperial presence, the city-state of Hellias was the last great hurdle._

Ryou paused, his pen hovering over the last word of the sentence. Was that how 'hurdle' was written...? He was pretty sure there was an -r at least, but-...He could really use an English dictionary. 

The reed pen’s nib leaked a big fat drop of ink onto the papyrus, blotting out half the sentence, and Ryou corrected himself to 'I could really use a laptop with a spellchecker'. And a socket to plug it in, of course, which in Assyria, left behind by history some three thousand years ago, wasn’t likely. Nobody in the entire Outlands had that kind of technology, though Ryou wondered if the Per Gathas might not have portable solar-powered generators available; perhaps behind some of the many closed doors he’d been barred from back at Asha Mayniu, reserved only for members of the higher Circles. 

Randomly dabbing his nib in the leaked ink, Ryou doodled a crude flame symbol like the one hanging around his neck. Haaskoning, the Per Gathas leader, had given him another ‘black box’ in case of kidnapping or accidental magical mishaps, it wasn’t a symbol of allegiance as such. Ryou was philosophically aligned with the Per Gathas, no doubt about that. He was writing this account of the war in the spirit of their historical documentations of the Outlands, using English, the secret language of the Inland branch of the Per Gathas. But at the end of the day, he didn't want to join them. There were too many chances his loyalties would then be divided. Haaskoning himself was less pressing these days, the events at Terentius’ funeral all those months ago showed how a semi-independent agent could be useful. 

So back to his written history from an Inlander's perspective of the end of Leyam's campaign against the Imperium presence in Alliance lands. Ryou carefully blotted out the ink smudge as much he could, sprinkled sand over it, and picked up his pen again with an unenthusiastic sigh. When he stuck to facts, the tale came out short and very dry. When he tried instead to express what it felt like to travel the campaign trail, navigate the politics behind it all and stand on that final battlefield, the result felt long, boring and self-centered. Writing was hard when it wasn’t a matter of quarterly financial reports. He was a financier from Tokyo’s business district, not an Assyrian historian, was it even his place to-

A door in another part of the Prince’s wing closed with a wooden _clack_. Ryou straightened up, listening. But the uneven gait was that of their servant Peistrasos, back from the fish merchant. Too bad, Ryou would love an excuse to get away from his desk right now. Oh well, he’d see Darius tonight. He’d seen Darius every night. The man had a lot of energy to burn and no war to burn it off on. 

Ryou gave his inkstone a quirky smile, since there was no-one around to see it. He’d spent all his teenage years and early adult life in hiding, only rarely finding ways of hooking up with other men. No such problem now. Ryou had never thought of himself as very sexual, but that had apparently been due to all the baggage it entailed back home. Now it turned out he had no problems matching Darius stroke for stroke, and there were a whole lot of those these days. Darius must be bored stiff, because the way he clung to Ryou was almost frenzied at times. Ryou could not understand his lover’s antsiness or how someone could actually _want_ to fight, but Darius was a warrior through and through. The Beast’s temper this last week in particular had been mercurial, especially after spending time locked in the King’s rooms to talk with Leyam. 

Ryou suspected he knew how this was going to end. The Hounds’ latest military foray had been against bandits from the barbarian lands who had taken advantage of the years of war to make opportunistic advances into Assyrian territory. That had been five twelvedays ago. Five twelvedays of rest and relaxation were four and a half too many for Ghan. Dionysodoros had spent all day yesterday in the stables tallying the condition of their mounts, while Dela the Kush was seen talking to the quartermaster. If Ryou were a betting man, he’d be laying heavy odds that his current streak of days not involving riding into danger was about to give out.

Darius had not discussed what was going on with Ryou this time. That out-of-character discretion suggested something more political was afoot, like a punitive attack against some small-time caliphate holding out against the new wave of regime change. Either way, more battles, more horse… 

A long deep stretch left Ryou leaning back in his chair. He let his head fall to one side on the end of the movement and checked the sundial on the garden roof outside. He had another whole hour before he had to meet up with Darius and Leyam in the Ivory wing near the library for some reason or other. Leyam had ordered him to meet them there while they ate breakfast together this morning, but he’d been his usual mischievous and enigmatic self about the reason why. 

Beyond the roof garden, the palatial grounds spread out, cool and inviting beneath the raw sunshine vibrating with the song of crickets. Ryou looked back at his desk, then at the gardens… then he quickly put away his writing implements and went for a nice, peaceful walk while he still could, before he got dragged away on yet another adventure. 

Outside the city, harvest season was winding down. Ryou had been in the Outlands for over a year, and in the city of Sura almost exactly twelve months. He still felt like a stranger most days. The exotic mosaic of the path told three thousand years of history beneath his sandals, the scent of perfume and spices with no name in his native Japanese hung in the air, so redolent as to be almost visible in the growing heat waves. He stuck to the shade of the trees and walked over to the training fields, but there was nobody wrestling there today… Yeah, the Hounds stationed here were definitely getting ready to move out if they weren’t at their daily regimen. With nobody there to talk to, Ryou headed towards the shady artificial grove of the Songbird Bower. Leyam often lurked there in the afternoon with his usual bevy of beautiful people and a few friends. Ryou could spend the time with him before they headed towards the Ivory wing together. 

A peacock screeched at him, then proceeded to look terrifically offended when Ryou ignored it out of habit. He rounded the corner-

Crap, the damned bird had been trying to warn him.

All eyes turned towards him at the peacock’s call, he couldn’t eclipse himself now, so he bowed deeply and held the position for the required five seconds.

“My Queen.”

Vibiana was holding court in the shade of a large bumpy tree. Dignitaries, a few slaves, some of Leyam’s staff and half a dozen eunuch guards stood around her. Leyam was nowhere in sight, unfortunately; he could usually be counted on to act as a buffer between his wife and the rest of the world.

“Lord Ryou.” Vibiana, as always, looked and sounded as if she was sitting in the middle of a cool hall bathed in moonlight, her white dress pristine and almost fantasmic against the vibrant heat-soaked green, yellow and terracotta colors around her. Ryou looked at her robes and veils without expression, but with some disapproval internally. He knew how much work the palace slaves had to put in to keep those blasted gowns so very white.

“Come, sit with me,” said the queen who, if she knew how much work she was giving people, would really not care. Not that she was spoiled, quite the contrary, and she was the opposite of dumb or oblivious. Vibiana would know of the toil of others, and consider it the pillars of her castle, the pedestal of the power she’d fought and killed for all her life.

At her words, a eunuch promptly pulled a seat of wood and leather slats forward for him, situating it before the queen. Ryou would rather sit down in a viper pit, but he wasn’t going to get out of it. 

Months ago, when they were leaving a conquered Helias, Ryou had listened aghast to Darius and Leyam callously speculate whether Vibiana would even be alive when they got back to Sura. They’d sent messengers to hail their victory ahead of their arrival, and, according to the traditions of the Pariya region, when Vibiana heard that her home city had fallen and all hopes of Roman intervention had fled, she should have gracefully flung herself off of the palace’s highest wall, or possibly taken poison if heights weren’t her thing. Or stabbed herself; Darius would have lent her a knife. 

But she had opted out of suicide. And in the months since, she’d made something of a comeback. Her power base was well and truly gone now, the danger she posed was almost negligible, was the rational explanation for the relaxing of her guard. The less rational reason - but the one Ryou was betting on - was that Leyam let her out to play for the same reason Darius went after bandits and rogue leaders; after a lifetime of danger, both brothers needed adversaries the way a plant needs water. 

Which was great for Leyam’s entertainment, as long as she didn’t kill him, but Ryou - and Rand and those in charge of keeping her claws trimmed and the king safe - would rather she’d been retired to some temple far, far away. Vibiana had declined to take poison, but she sure loved to dole it out, metaphorically speaking. So far metaphorically, though Ryou, for his part, politely declined any food and drink she offered him every time, and steered clear of her when he could. 

He wished he could steer clear of her now. Tagani, one of Leyam’s girls and a friend of Ryou’s, was behind the queen, waving a woven fan above her head, and she seemed positively distraught on his behalf. Vibiana must have something truly spectacular cooked up for him in her venomous little heart. Lovely. If Ryou had let the Pariya tendency for superstition infect him in any way, he’d be certain this was the Gods’ punishment for skipping out on his homework.

After the usual pleasantries and commenting on the heat of the day, Vibiana opened hostilities with a cold smile and a purr. “I did not see you in court yesterday to greet our visitors. Our halls were all the poorer for lack of your light and wisdom. Are you not well?”

Either she’d somehow managed to poison him at some point in the last two days and was wondering when the symptoms were going to show up, or else she had a real nasty piece of news to deliver, because Vibiana was never that sweet to, well, anybody, and especially not to Ghan the Beast’s piece on the side.

“I am well, my Queen. I had pressing business to conduct.” Writing a letter to Haaskoning, dictating a carefully worded missive to Rand who was currently away in far-off Eleridun looking for Ancient activity, and jotting down his diary-slash-historical-record while chewing on his reed pen and scowling at the papyrus. The visitors Vibiana was referring to had arrived during that time; they were taking up residence in the guest wing of the palace for the next few weeks. They hailed from Armanne-Narradi, a rich and powerful territory in west Assyria, buttressing the country’s furthest border and stabilizing that entire region. Satrap Shin-Arbat Par Seenecherb was a power to be carefully managed. The official court greeting for that kind of VIP was on average four hours of flowery speeches, gallantries, gifts, the sacrifice of an animal and blessings by the temples, followed by another few hours of ceremonial feasting. As far as Ryou was concerned, writing letters was a good reason to stay away from all that pomp and ceremony, and so would be ‘painting my toenails’.

Vibiana fingers were elegant, heavy with silver rings as she reached towards a bowl of pitted dates and proceeded to rip one into tiny kitten bites. A servant stood ready with an alabaster finger bowl of rose water for when she was finished. “The Satrap’s arrival was magnificent. His retinue was thirty strong, all dressed in green with golden knots and mantles, gold circles on their brow and red togas for the elders. A hundred guards at least, as I can count. It was a sight.”

“He sounds blessed,” said Ryou, wondering where this could possibly be going.

“Greatly blessed. His youngest child, his daughter Zarurammis, walked at his side. She wore green as well, sown with gold and jacinth into wheat patterns. Quite a lovely girl, sweet manners.”

Another date was sacrificed. A cup of wine stood at her elbow on the ornate table, but she’d yet to take a sip. Ryou was morbidly curious to see if she would, if the red liquid would taint her lips or spill on her dress and give her some human colors.

“Ghan was particularly attentive as she sat by his side.”

Poor Darius. Since taking his legitimate place in court after Helias, there were now fewer occasions when he could duck out of political functions. This had not turned him into a polite and polished politician by any means, though, so Ryou also felt sorry for the girl. Hopefully she wasn’t traumatized. 

There was a pause. Vibiana looked at Ryou. Ryou looked at Vibiana. 

“Very attentive. She is a great beauty.”

Ryou’s mask was as good as ever; what the President of Ujiie Standards and Trading had helped Ryou build, the Assyrian court had polished to perfection. Which was good, because it was probably a capital offence to snort and roll one’s eyes at a queen, even if the cat was trying to claw. But if that was her gambit, it was pathetic. Darius’s approach to the fair sex was well known among his friends and family, and essentially boiled down to “I promised not to punch any, what more do you want?!” The only reason he’d be ‘very attentive’ - using Vibiana’s innuendo - to a Satrap’s daughter was if the Satrap had seriously annoyed him and he wanted to get his own back by messing with one of his kin, and this wasn’t the case. For starters, Darius didn’t do that anymore, he had, in the last year, learned a measure of forbearance and steely patience. A delighted Leyam insisted on laying all the credit at Ryou’s door, but Ryou, for his part, thought Darius was simply trying to measure up to the role his King had entrusted him… Plus, Darius had no bone to pick with Satrap Shin-Arbat, and no reason to wind him up. Darius hadn’t talked much about the visitors taking over the palace, but the bit he’d said specifically about Shin-Arbat was, “He’s a good man, fought in the battle of-”such and such, Ryou tended to blank out the strategic details, “-all day, but he held the western flank and his banner stood proud. I don’t mind having him as a friend or being seen with him.” He’d then talked a bit about the region of Armanne-Narradi; it meant Pomegranate River in dialect, rich and fruitful as the name promised. Darius had said something about perhaps visiting the place one day, but he’d suggested it in an oddly abrupt tone, then he’d interrupted the conversation and went to throw spears with his troops, his dogs slinking at his heels in a timid way.

“Has Ghan mentioned her to you at all?”

“No, my queen, Darius has not.” Darius’s legitimate name was recognized throughout most of the Pariya now, but the only time Vibiana ever used it was when Leyam was in the room. 

“It may be too early yet. I know that there are tides in court, sweeping us all along, but it is unwise to predict them before the king does.”

Ryou had no idea what that meant.

“The tides are still there, though.” Vibiana smiled, an expression devoid of warmth, all sharp nails and hungry eyes. “And it is something to think about, is it not? That Lord Ghan- I’m sorry, I should say, Lord Darius Par Sirrianus, prince of this realm, must perforce soon need a wife.”

Above her head, Tagani’s fan trembled in its lazy wave as she looked down at her feet abruptly, and that, more than Vibiana’s words, chilled Ryou to the core.

A lot of odd behavior from his lover this past month suddenly took on new meaning-

But no. No, this was stupid. 

“I believe that’s up to both parties,” Ryou heard himself say with stunning poise, because he would never be caught flat footed by the likes of Vibiana, whether Inland, Outland or way out past the veil and into the void.

“No, my dear Lord Ryou, it would be up to the king,” Vibiana retaliated smoothly. 

_Darius storming out of Leyam’s rooms a couple of times this past week, refusing to say what the matter was, mouth tight and pinched-_

“I suppose it is. But as you pointed out, it’s up to the king to predict the tide.” Ryou’s world was tipping, but that just made the golden mask more impenetrable. That was what his father had taught him all those years ago. Show them _nothing._

“So very true,” Vibiana demurred, damage done. If she was disappointed by Ryou’s lack of reaction, she didn’t show it either. Ryou hated the Assyrian court so very, very much at times, he really would rather be off fighting bandits with Darius and the Hounds right now ( _Darius-_ )

Ryou’s mask was fast, but he was damned if he was going to sit there for the next half hour of torture while those long fingers and wicked nails poked at his seams, looking for weak spots. “If you will excuse me, my Queen. I cannot stay with you long. The King summoned me earlier to appear at the Ivory wing at this time.”

Vibiana looked him over carefully. Then she waved dismissal, satisfied, perhaps, that her cut had landed even if she couldn’t see the blood. “Such a pity, I was looking forward to your company, but I know the King is there already along with Ghan. They must be awaiting you.”

Ryou felt the knot in his chest twist a bit further. He hadn’t thought anything of it earlier when Leyam told him to meet up with them there alone this afternoon, now Ryou was forced to wonder what they were going to talk about… (No, no, come on, no-)

Ryou got up, bowed and walked away with no signs of hurry. He hoped he’d not given her the satisfaction of knowing how affected he was, especially since most other men in the Pariya region would have responded to the news with “Really? My lover’s getting married? Good for him, about time.” But Ryou’s odd objection to Darius taking on another lover or concubine was somewhat known throughout Sura’s upper circle, because Leyam was unable to keep it a secret when he could tease his brother with it. Male nobles and courtiers had made it known to Ryou that his obsession with being Darius’s only companion was ‘unmanly’; jealousy and possessiveness were feminine traits in their books. Women, however, seemed more sympathetic, even though they were raised all their lives to the obligation of sharing their men with who knows how many other wives, concubines, slaves and whores. 

The peacock bobbed its neck at him as he turned to take the left-handed path. Ryou breathed in the warm garden air to dispel the cloying perfume that had saturated the bower. Now, calm down, he told himself. So far, Vibiana had merely lined up a couple of conjectures and then hidden behind Leyam’s shadow without confirming-

“Lord Ryou!” someone hissed behind him.

Ryou glanced over his shoulder to see Tagani running after him as quickly as she could in her jeweled sandals and floating veils. 

“What, she wants me back again?” Ryou asked dangerously.

“No, she sent me for a better fan.” Tagani hoisted the offending article in illustration. 

No she didn’t, thought Ryou, she sent you after me to confirm the news in private, the conniving bitch.

Which meant he didn’t even need to ask Tagani if it was true or not. When she wasn’t called to play servant to the Queen, Tagani was one of the women frequently lounging around the antechamber of Leyam’s rooms, awaiting the King’s pleasure. She was well placed to hear rumors closest to the source.

Tagani was staring at Ryou’s chin; she was not allowed to directly look a man if he wasn’t a eunuch. But the girl liked Ryou for all she wasn’t even allowed to address him face to face. Ryou’s habit of being civil to everyone, from Leyam down to the slaves, won him friends in odd quarters, and he’d spoken with Tagani and her two sisters outside of Leyam’s rooms more than once while waiting for Darius to come out, or for the King to dress and appear. 

In fact, one could almost say Tagani and her coterie had adopted him; the poor beleaguered foreigner with delicate manners, alien customs and who couldn’t remember the simplest rule - why, the number of times he’d approached the King’s back without a direct invitation, he was lucky he was bedding the brother or he’d have been whipped or mutilated by now. When Tagani spoke to him away from the artificial veneer of the court, she was both kind and stern, like an older sister from the top of her seventeen years of age. 

“Do not let her venom eat you, Lord Ryou, I beg of you. To begin with, she is right, only the King can make this decision, it is his until he chooses to announce it...” she let her words trail with a significant look at the embroidered chest panel of Ryou’s fawn-colored tunic. So, the marriage was being discussed (damn it, Darius!) but it wasn’t a done deal yet. As far as this servant knew, at any rate. 

“The Queen is bilious because the Satrap has _two_ unwed daughters who are both here,” Tagani added, addressing Ryou’s chin conspiratorially. 

Ryou rubbed his forehead, trying to figure out why he should care that Shin-Arbat had any number of daughters other than the one his lover might very well get hitched to.

“Two daughters,” Tagani repeated slowly for the moron. “Oh, come now, I’ll give you my pity and a shiny sestra if you can’t guess my meaning and why the Queen is vexed.”

“Um…”

Tagani rolled her eyes and gave him the answer (though not the sestertius she’d promised in her servant’s patois). “The King! He will surely marry the other if his brother takes the youngest! The war is over, he’s far past ready to take another wife. And Shin-Arbat has too many daughters, he hungers for noble sons, and all the better if they are brothers whose alliance has never been shaken by the entire might of their enemies. Haven’t you yet heard of this? Half the court is whispering of Shin-Arbat’s good fortune to come. Too much good fortune, according to some,” she added as an aside. “The richer they are, the more they envy, fish trying to drink the river to keep it all to themselves…”

No wonder Vibiana had felt like sharing the misery. Hopefully the Satrap bred strong daughters, or at least very lucky ones.

“You need to go, Tagani,” Ryou said gently. He had a dozen questions for her, but in her position, it could mean her life to gossip about King’s business, she’d probably given him more than she should have already. If she dawdled, Vibiana would have her feet caned to teach her to hurry. 

Tagani nodded and darted by him, but abruptly stopped and reached out. Her hand hovered over his; she was not allowed to touch a man either if the King or one of his eunuchs wasn’t present. 

“If the King commands, we all must obey,” she said softly. “The wise know acceptance when choice is no more, and you are very wise, Lord Ryou.”

Acceptance or choice, what would she know of either, poor slave at a man’s whim while another woman, not so different than her, lived in luxury and could have her whipped on a whim? Tagani was very fond of Leyam, all his servants were, he treated them so much better than many other nobles, but they were still chattel, and by her very presence and her sympathy, she made Ryou, a free man who could walk away, feel shame added to the maelstrom of other emotions churning in his gut. What he did not feel, as this child nearly half his age hurried away, was wise. 

“Right,” Ryou muttered to himself. The sun hadn’t reached the edge of the aqueduct yet, it was still a bit early, but like hell was Ryou going to wait around for a firm answer to his multiple questions, not if Leyam and Darius were both already in the Ivory Wing doing who knows what. 

There were guards barring access to the wing’s entrance, but they stood aside for him promptly as he approached. He climbed the stairs, slipped under the embroidered curtain, and nearly ran into Tupila. The old minister blinked slowly at him like a startled turtle, standing stock still in the hallway.

“Lord Ryou! Gods guide your steps, I was coming to see you.”

“Really? I’m sorry, I need to go see the king.”

“I know, I know, but you have time to spare and I will only take a few breaths. I wished to ask you, before tonight’s feast - you remember that the king has ordained your presence at his side, right?”

“Yes, I know.” Ryou’s gaze drifted past the old minister’s wrinkled face and bald head towards the cool shadows of the wing. Darius was waiting for him in the hall before the library.

“Good. I would like to invite you to take wine and fruit in my pavilion with some guests before the joyous occasion.” 

“I will need to get ready for the dinner at that time,” hedged Ryou, who was starting to get a headache.

“I would very much appreciate your presence,” said Tupila measuredly, pressing in a way that was unlike him. “And I believe a mutual friend of ours would discover himself obliged if you accepted.”

What did that mean? What friend?

“You have not met my guests yet, so before the feast, I would like to present to you the two flowers of Armanne-Narradi. They begged me for an introduction to our resident scholar, the man who led the battle of the gods during the funeral of General Terentius Varro.”

What. The. Actual. Hell.

“Why?” asked Ryou bluntly, not up to political double speech.

“Lord Darius has told them about your extensive knowledge and prowess. As I understand it, the youngest, the lady Zarurammis, is also interested in poetry, you would have much to discuss. She knows how close you are to the king’s brother, and she would love to meet you in the calm of my garden rather than in the noise of Ashur’s Hall. I truly do believe Lord Darius would like you to approve of the young lady, as a friend of his should.”

Oh. 

Lovely.

Right. This was classic Assyrian right here - it could be coming right out of a fucking play. Tupila either had not gotten the memo about Ryou’s reservations regarding his lover hooking up, or else he’d dismissed it as some trifling idiosyncrasy on Ryou’s part that would not get in the way of important matters. Because this was the Pariya, this was a region where all men of means married, especially princes, but when one of them had a Best Friend such as Ryou, it was important to make sure said friend would get along well with the bride to be. From his phrasing, it was obvious Tupila had not asked Darius about this, this was the minister’s own initiative, but he had to think he was doing the two men a favor, organizing this meeting in the calm and privacy of his garden so the fiancee and the lover could look each other over in peace and quiet. 

This… this was really happening?

No, come _on_ , Darius would have said something-...

“In an hour,” said Tupila with a small nod. “I do not believe the King requires your presence for very long. I hope to see you then.”

Ryou heard himself respond, some instinctive Assyrian politeness that had been drilled into him this past year until it could pop out without any conscious input. His eyes were still fixed on the far corners of the hallway as Tupila nodded at him and left.

Finally, after a minute, he started walking towards the library. 

...Darius was a prince of the realm now, he needed a wife. He needed legitimate heirs. He needed normalcy in the eyes of the court, he needed to fit into their expectations. Analytically, Ryou could appreciate that this was not aimed at him at all, that this was happening at a level of politics that directed the course of countries and didn’t care for individual feelings. This might not even affect Darius’s relationship with Ryou at all. 

Except it would. Ryou could not be analytical with this, he couldn’t even be wise or reasonable. Even if it was certain this woman couldn’t take Darius away from him - and as the mother of his children, how could she not? - Ryou couldn’t accept it. He wanted all of Darius. Having to share him out, make room in their quarters, their time and their lives for a wife in addition to all his obligations to the Hounds and Leyam, seeing Darius drift away from him over the months and years… it would kill Ryou by inches. 

A voice ghosted through the corridor, Leyam’s high tone. Ryou slowed. The answers to a lot of his questions were in the hall up ahead, and he was terrified of hearing them. He stopped just before he entered the large room, one hand propped against the cool stone wall while he tried to calm himself and pull his composure together. He was coming in through the furthest entrance to the hall, the corridor ending at a right angle sheltered him from view from where he stood. He leaned forward reluctantly, just enough to see into the room beyond.

They were waiting for him some ten meters away, at a three quarter angle so he could mostly see their backs and not much else. Leyam had on one of his androgynous and highly personalized outfits in a lovely green color - just like the bint from pomegranate river, Ryou thought stormily. Darius was at his side, arms crossed, shoulders and neck at an angle that suggested a surly mood. They were facing the wall, a spot that had been empty last time Ryou came this way. Now a large object on a low stone plinth occupied the space, draped in a rich red cloth and rising almost as tall as the two and a half meter ceiling above their heads. Ryou leaned back so he was once more hidden by the corridor’s wall and passed his hand over his face, checking his features instinctively. An old habit. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done that...

“It’s said the women of Armanne-Narradi all bear sons on their first labor,” said Leyam out of the blue, breaking the silence that had gathered. The words bounced around the hall to where Ryou had gone very still. 

“That’s bullshit.” Darius’s voice was a monotone. “The wife of Heraxen is from there and he never had anything other than a phalanx of daughters. This bird’s father is sure here looking for sons.”

Without any intention of doing so, Ryou leaned forward again so he could be sure he was hearing this properly without the echoes of the hall obfuscating the words. 

He could see Leyam again now, shifting from one foot to the other in his high-soled shoes. ”...She's a very proper woman, sensible. They both are. Oh, and quiet. That's inestimable. It's a really good match, brother.”

“Yeah, she's a peach,” said Darius, clearly unenthused. "The only point that’s going to matter, if any, is that she's in good health and will bear strong children. Then it will be what it will be.” 

“Huh-uh. You say that now because you're not yet married. Trust me, the wrong wife can make your life truly miserable. Come back to me in five years of living with a screeching heron and tell me again 'it will be what it will be.'” There followed half a minute of silence, which seemed all the longer for the one listening in with his head spinning. "So, you've really made up your mind?" Leyam finally asked, his voice quiet and stripped of its usual dramatic flair. “Are you really sure you want to do this?”

“Want? No. But I told you, I honor my commitments.” 

“Even if you hate it, huh?” Though they were talking to each other, they were still standing side by side in an odd stillness unlike both men, staring at the object beneath its red drape.

“My wants don't figure in this, not in final.”

“Hmm. What did Ryou say?”

Darius didn’t answer. In the silence, the blood rushing through Ryou’s ears made a sound like waves crashing to shore. 

“...Darius?”

“What?”

“What did Ryou say?”

When Darius still didn’t answer, Leyam made a noise of confusion, then he spun with one of his theatrical staggers to stare at his brother, further turning his back to Ryou. “You didn't tell him yet?!”

“No.” 

“But- but- are you mad?! I was going to open betrothal negotiations _tomorrow!_ I only waited this long because you _asked_ me to! And what in Hades are you planning to do tomorrow afternoon for-”

“Stop squawking. I’ll tell him tonight.”

“...Darius, you're my brother, I love you, but you're an ass.”

Darius’s response was short, guttural, it drowned in its own echo before it could reach Ryou’s ringing ears.

“Ashur love you, brother, why the hell did you wait? What's the poor guy going to think?” Leyam asked, completely bowled over. 

“Ryou thinks too much about me for his own good. I'm not going to give him time to think. He'll just argue us both into a knot and I have had enough of that to last me. I've made my decision and I don't want a lengthy fight over it.”

Leyam turned back towards the object on the plinth. “Tch, you're not supposed to use ambush tactics in a relationship. Well, not unless you're me. Ryou’s got a lot of pride, and he’s strict on manners. Springing your decision like an ultimatum on a man like that, it’s both stupid and downright rude, cur, you really should know better… Say, wasn't he supposed to be here by now?”

"Yeah. Don't know what's keeping him." Darius looked around, but Ryou quickly leaned back into the shadows of the corridor until he was completely out of sight.

Leyam’s voice cascaded around the space again. “No need to wait, he can see it just as well when he comes later. Give that a pull, will you?”

There was the sound of heavy cloth falling to a stone floor. When he heard Leyam hum, a weighing sound, Ryou peaked around the corner again.

Eternity had captured the statue mid-stride, standing tall with one foot forward. All in marble but for the iron of a long spear clutched in a white hand, the butt planted near the arch of an exquisitely carved sandaled foot. The figure was dressed in minimalist robes that still managed to suggest a soft richness that defied the hardness of the stone. The man had a long well-kept beard, all curls in rigorous geometries, and a semi-conical hat on his head that resembled the one Leyam wore on ceremonial events. An aquiline nose, narrow eyes and high cheekbones made his features stern, almost forbidding, though that might have been due to the size of the face staring blindly out across the hall towards a gaily painted mural of some battle on the other side.

“That’s…” Darius still had a corner of the red cloth grasped in his fist. His stance was rigid. “You said it was done in the greek style, but I didn’t think-...”

“Hmm, maybe not my best decision. It looks impressive, but truthfully, father always preferred traditional Assyrian.” Without looking away from the statue, Leyam waved a distracted hand towards other figures in the hall, their rigid poses and standardized features reducing them to near-anonymity. “It’s good, though. I didn’t think it would look that much like him...”

“Hm.”

They were silent, staring at the statue looking over their heads, then Leyam propped an elbow up onto Darius’s shoulder to lean against his brother in a caricature of relaxed. “I wonder what he would think if he saw us now.” There was something brassy in Leyam’s voice, a tone Ryou was not used to hearing there.

Ryou stared at the statue of a dead king which appeared to be judging them all from the unattainable height of his dynasty. Then he left, ignoring the king’s orders, Tupila’s invitation and the upcoming dinner, to head back to his room.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rating is M for now, but it might dip down to Teen, or go up to Explicit, I can't quite decide how I want one of my possibly-smutty chapters to go.


	2. Chains of Destiny

Being neither decorous, servile nor even very polite, Peistratos was far from perfect servant material by Sura standards, but the one-time soldier had exquisite instincts. So when his reminder of the feast tonight was met with a curt “Not going” from the usually courteous Ryou, Peistratos just said, “Well then, I’ll put away the clothes, sir,” and left Ryou to sit his fill in silence on the edge of his bed, staring blindly out the window in the direction of the Women’s Gate. 

The sun fell below the edges of the aqueduct, then it kissed the edge of the palace wall. 

From deep within the Prince’s wing, he heard movement and a distant but sharp “What?!” Then the stride of footsteps coming nearer, along with the click of claws on stone.

Darius thrust the curtain barring access to Ryou’s room aside without so much as a by-your-leave. He’d shrugged into his formal court attire but the rich brown tunic wasn’t fitted yet, red cords dangling forlorn over heavily embroidered shoulders and chest, waiting for Peistratos’s finishing touches and a covering mantle. He was still wearing the cinched and belted leggings of a soldier beneath it all, and he was barefoot. 

“What in the void are you doing here, man? We waited for you near the library. Peistratos says you’re not coming to the feast? You’re not even ready.”

“That is correct.” Ryou did not look away from the window on the other side of the room. 

Darius parked himself into Ryou’s line of sight with an ill-tempered “Tch”, but Ryou kept his gaze on the gathering evening outside, the pink and blue sky peeking over his lover’s shoulder. In his peripheral vision, Darius’s dogs stopped in their tracks, sniffed the air, then changed their mind and went to crouch in wary heaps of fur near the door.

“The king ordered your attendance, Ryou. You don’t get to sit here like a stump. And did you not get an invitation by Tupila? He was looking for you too. He said he wanted to introduce you to someone. You insulted him.”

“I will apologize when I see him, and as for his special guest, I suppose I will meet her tomorrow,” said Ryou a trifle sadistically, finally looking his lover straight in the face. 

Darius’s expression of puzzled irritation closed off abruptly. He turned on himself, breaking eye contact, looking slowly at the desk, the chest, the lone shelf with a pile of books and a fired clay statue of two naked men wrestling (a gift from Leyam) as if mentally picking up each article, weighing them and putting them back down again. 

“You won’t have the opportunity tomorrow,” he finally said in a steady, measured voice. “You have a voyage to prepare for. In fact it would be best to start packing tonight after the feast, the first leg of the journey begins at Mooncrest before-”

“What? A voyage? What are you talking about?” 

From where Darius was standing, Ryou could now only see the hawk-like profile as his lover declared: “Inlands. You are going back Inlands.”

That came so far out of left field, Ryou was shocked speechless. Hadn’t they skipped about five separate steps in their breakup conversation here?! Wasn’t Darius first going to inform him of his marriage? At least he knew Ryou well enough not to suggest the latter stick around for a few months in order to hold the bride’s veil - but from there to kicking him out of his home of the past year without even asking him- asking him _anything-_ Was Ryou really worth so little consideration? 

Darius looked back at him, frowning, gaze searching Ryou’s face. “Do you understand?”

Ryou felt like a hollow bell, every word sending shockwaves ringing through him. Understand? He supposed he did. From somewhere, he produced a jerky nod.

Darius stared at him, the frown growing deeper. “... Well, say something.”

He was standing strong, braced like he expected an outburst, but what was there to say? This was the way it had to be. Darius had royal obligations, and he’d always been brutally honest about his duty to Leyam trumping sundry romantic attachments. This was all a shock to Ryou today, but Darius had had weeks to think about it, he must have realized Ryou wouldn’t want to stay here if- if-... Darius expected that, after the fuss, the shouting and the drama was finished, Ryou would take the clean break and go back Inland. Ryou hadn’t actually thought the matters through quite that far yet, but he’d arrived part of the way. He’d been sitting here intending to have this conversation in private, hear Darius out, coldly and calmly accept the inevitable, let this man he loved go without a scene. Returning to Japan was a logical next step, he supposed, though he couldn't picture it. Images of skyscrapers, streets, cars- they stayed locked behind impenetrable glass. 

The silence stretched until Darius himself decided to fill it, words still abrupt. “This is a good time to leave. You’ve been over a year away from kith and kin. You need to return to your lands, and once there, I am sure you’ll agree. Even if you don’t, this is the time to do it. Tomorrow- complicated things are going to start tomorrow-... either way, it’s decided.” Darius marched over to the desk, picked up a paperweight carved from a rhinoceros horn as if he was going to pack it right now, then he put it down again and frowned back at Ryou, examining his features minutely. “Say something. Are you ill?” 

“No, I'm...” Even full of irony, the word ‘fine’ would not take shape on Ryou's tongue. It wanted to come out, preserve the icy mask that characterized him- that _had_ characterized him for almost twenty years. 

But he wasn’t that man anymore. He’d changed this past year. He’d seen things, done things - he had _felt_ more than ever before. His pride didn’t want to give Darius the scene the latter was so obviously expecting - but to hell with it! It wouldn’t change Darius’s mind, it’d humiliate Ryou by making it obvious he cared about the man so much more than Darius evidently cared about him, but he was not going to pretend his feelings didn’t exist for all that. Even if it shredded what was left of his mask and his dignity with it… well, that no longer mattered to him, a tattered thing he’d been holding onto since childhood. Time to discard it. 

"I'm not fine."

Brown eyes, already kohl-lined for the feast, widened in surprise. Darius had once declared the stars would fall out of the sky the day Ryou stopped saying he was ‘fine’ despite all evidence to the contrary. Well then, Ryou's departure was going to be heralded by a meteor shower.

“I'm not fine. Listen, you-… I know a lot separates our cultures and that Assyrians don't have much notion of love between men outside of overdeveloped friendship and some- some mutual jerking off, but if you think I'm fine getting thrown out of the palace so you can get married in peace, you must really not think highly of the feelings I have for you. That's all I have to say. If you have anything to add, now’s your chance, I'm going to be busy packing this evening. It won’t take long, most of this stuff is yours anyway.”

...After a false start and a wobbly “whu?”, Darius rubbed his forehead and growled, "Fuck me, I don't even know where to _begin!_ What?!”

Ryou hadn't seen his lover this blindsided since a long gone Nissan had smacked into a Bher Rajin. But... a niggle of doubt surged through Ryou's inner tempest. Darius was speechless, shocked, but there wasn't any remorse or caginess in his demeanor. 

“Are you getting married...?” Ryou asked suspiciously. 

“Right, let's start there!” Darius said in a loud voice that brought the dogs to their feet with a startled bark. "Who the fuck says I'm getting married?!"

“A good part of the court is gossiping about it.” At least that was what Tagani had said, and she had her ear to the ground.

“What?!”

“They say you're going to marry one of those two sisters from- from that fruit river region- place." Ryou gestured wildly in irritation, not willing to fight the Assyrian habit of compounding nouns into overly long names right now. 

The words were barely out of his mouth that his lover’s expression changed on a dime, from surprised outrage to surprise tinged with something a good deal more like apprehension. “They- they say that? But-...”

Ryou’s fists clenched in his lap. "Darius! For the love of- if you're getting married, _tell me!"_

“No! No, I'm not getting married.”

A wave of relief failed to materialize through Ryou's storm-wracked emotions. If Darius wasn’t getting hitched, then what had Ryou overheard in the Ivory wing? And why was Ryou getting dragged back to the Inlands?! 

Darius must have realized his hesitation had betrayed him, his snarl looked self-directed as he rubbed his forehead hard enough to leave angry red marks. “I'm not getting married unless- I'm not, alright? But Shin-Arbat doesn't know that, he thinks he's getting at least one of his bitches off his hands by the end of this season. It never occured to me-… The negotiations have just started in secret, nobody’s supposed to be talking about it, least of all to you. And then you-” Fury sparked in his eyes as he rallied. “Ishhara strike you blind, you- you- to think I'd treat you so! You made it very clear how you felt about me taking anyone else to my bed, much less a wife! Maybe I don’t always keep my hands to myself- well, being drunk doesn’t count, we agreed. But I’d have to be drowned in three barrels of beer before I got _married_ without noticing! Why did you think- you’ve never listened to gossip before, _now_ is when you start?!”

“I was only informed about the gossip. Some people close to Leyam told me about the marriage, people who should know.”

“Tell me their names and I’ll have them whipped raw,” Darius promised in a dangerous voice.

“Like hell I will. It was kindly meant.” Tagani and Tupila were not going to suffer for trying to warn him and help him make his peace with what they thought was coming. Vibiana didn’t deserve any such consideration, but she was untouchable at present, unfortunately. Then Ryou stared hard at his lover, eyes narrowing. “More to the point, I overheard you earlier with Leyam. _He_ said you’re getting married. You told him you would honor your commitments, and how I think too much about you for my own good-”

Darius's eyes flickered shut. "You weren’t supposed to hear that."

“Isn’t he setting up the betrothal tomorrow? Isn’t that what he said?”

“- and I didn't mean it like that, I- the betrothal?” Darius opened his eyes, stared at him hard, then his gaze leapt to some spot over Ryou’s right shoulder. He scowled, shoving a hand into his thick mane and tugging hard. “The betrothal, you heard that, of course you did, furies, that’s-... look, forget about that, that’s not related to the matter at hand, that’s something Leyam is-... ugh. Just put that aside, alright?“

“How can I? Leyam, _your king_ , is setting it up! You've always made it clear that your first duty is to him. Your commitment is to his throne, his lineage. Otherwise what the hell were you both talking about?!”

“You know, if you'd just come in and asked me instead of lurking outside the door like a beggar…”

“And have your brother stick his nose into it? I decided to wait for you here instead.” Ryou forced himself to relax and unfist his fingers before he ripped holes in the seams of his tunic’s lap. 

“...That… was good strategy,” Darius conceded, fists settling on his hips. Then he sighed. “Fine, my duty. Look. I don't want to talk of baneful things, but in the advent that I am much closer to the throne than I am now, and I hope it never happens, for my sake and for the throne’s… then yes, I will have to take a wife. Probably more than one. I know you don't understand-”

“I understand royal lineage and obligations full well. That's why you need to marry someone.”

“No,” Darius said, simple and firm. “I'm too far from the throne at present to worry about that. And between Leyam and myself is an understanding going back fifteen years. I'll be his general, his beast, his savage dog, he can chain me to the stables and have me bite the passersby if he wants to, but he doesn't force me to clean up and parade through the court like a trained mongrel. He can dissemble and lie all he wants, but he won’t use me against my will for any of his political schemes. Only if Leyam is no longer here - Ashur hold his hand above his head and protect him from all harm - if his life's work is under my protection, then I will be forced to pick up that mantle. But my duty right now is light; the Romans are in full retreat, the Ancients have followed them as far as we can tell. Leyam is healthy and so is his eldest son. In the meantime, I have another commitment. To you.”

“To me? What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” his lover said brusquely. “I told you, it's time you went back to the Inlands. You need to find your family again, Ryou. You tore yourself away from them and your country for my sake, now you need to go back. It's a dangerous voyage, so we’re taking the Hounds with us as escort as far as the border, but then you and I are on our own. Your country sounds civilized, I can ensure your safety for the time it takes to get you back home.”

That did the job of turning Ryou's expectations around the rest of the way to one hundred and eighty degrees. "What...? You want to come with me to _Japan?_ But-..."

Darius shrugged, a move that broke their eye contact. “I need to see you home safe. I'm not going to watch you gallop over the border and never know- not know that you're okay on the other side.” Ryou’s instincts, still riled from a stressful afternoon full of - apparently - misunderstandings, prickled like crazy, there was something off with Darius, with his words- “Leyam is going to make you swear on all your gods that you'll have me back soon, though. I said that from tomorrow onwards, things are going to get complicated… Inder take us, every deva in the land is about to plough up the court and sow strife like it’s barley. You see, Leyam needs another wife. So now that Shin-Arbat is here, and Aksum and the Ionian cities representatives, he’s going to start opening negotiations to see which region, Satrapy or country he’s going to honor with his choice, and there’s going to be infighting and political backstabbing until he settles it. I can't stay away too long, I will need to be back to make sure none of these high-born try anything crude if they get disappointed with their lot. A month, maybe, two at most. Well, who knows how long an odyssey of this kind could take, but I do need to be back before the New Year.”

“I can’t just go back across the border like it’s nothing, Darius! The Per Gathas would come down on me like a ton of bricks for doing that, it’s forbidden to return-”

“Screw them. They'll never find you Inland.”

“Huh- _huh.”_ Ryou hesitated, his suspicions had already proved completely wrong once today. But he still trusted his instincts on this; Darius was hiding something, he had been for weeks now. There were also a few details from that earlier conversation with Leyam, and from what Darius had said, or not said, right now. Ryou had his suspicions; he had a feeling there was a good reason why he’d made his mistaken assumptions about Darius breaking up with him to begin with, and why, when Darius had come in here tonight and started talking about his plans, Ryou had assumed he was getting kicked out and would be returning to the Inlands by himself. 

“You’re escorting me Inlands, but you don't think I'll be coming back with you,” he stated.

Darius's expression immediately changed, shuttering like a window, giving Ryou his answer.

“Darius, what the hell are you planning?!”

The question crashed headlong into a mulish silence. Darius stalked back over to the desk and nudged pens and paper around, staring at the scribbles in a language he could not read. 

“Speak to me,” Ryou growled. 

“Whether you stay or not is your decision,” Darius said, apparently addressing the inkstone in a stormy voice, “and I do not intend to sway you from what is right. What is right in this instance is to take seriously the responsibility you have to your family. You yourself thought I was going to kick you out to fulfil my duty to Leyam,” Darius added as if in sudden inspiration, turning towards Ryou again.

“And you’d be okay with that?”

Darius made an aggrieved gesture. “You see, this is exactly what I was talking about. You think too much about me, what I feel- but fine, if you’re asking, I _feel_ you should be a little more concerned about yourself and the situation you left behind in your homeland. Your father won’t live forever, you’re the eldest son, unmarried, childless, you should be taking that seriously. As for me, I’ll certainly miss the way you manage to make the simplest conversation way more complicated than it needs to be, but I’m sure I’ll find someone else who can philosophize in and out of my bed within a year or so. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No, and I’m disappointed,” Ryou said coldly, staring at him hard. “What I wanted to hear was the truth.”

“What?!” Darius blazed, furious as ever to be called a liar. 

“You're lying by omission if you just drop me off Inland and walk away like you don't care.”

Darius’s lips curled back into the kind of snarl that would suit his dogs, he looked like he was going to rail and shout, but then he made one of those untranslatable sounds that failed even the Gift of Zaratusra and turned away, face like thunder. Not denying anything, Ryou noticed without surprise. Unlike Ryou, Darius was not good at hiding his feelings, and it was obvious they ran much deeper than his callous words had suggested.

“Talk to me.”

“Oh that's rich from the man who's been walking around for a twelveday thinking I was getting married," Darius spat over his shoulder.

Touché. “I only learned today-” Ryou knew he sounded defensive. “Well, I said something when it mattered, right?”

“Yeah, you did!” Darius snapped, picking up a map from Ryou’s shelf, rolling it up roughly and slamming it down again. “You told me that you weren't fine with me getting married and then you were going to pack your bags! Oh, and you said three words about the feelings you have for me-”

“That's three words more than I've ever said to anyone else in my life," Ryou said quietly.

The lowered tone and his meaning interrupted Darius's outburst more surely than a shout. 

“But fine. You want one of us at least to speak plainly? Here it is, then, you stubborn bastard. What I feel for you- so much separates us, our characters, our entire culture, it seems almost insane to think we can even be friends, much less-... the word ‘love’ gets bandied around Sura twenty times a day, usually before someone stabs you in the back, that’s why I don’t use it, it’s culturally not-... I love Leyam and Rand, Dionosydoros and all my other friends, but what I feel for you goes far beyond that, far beyond being your bedmate. Darius, the moment I saw you I felt more for you than I have ever felt for anyone in my entire life to date - and no, I didn’t love you or like you or even know you back then, but the way you fought and smiled and _lived_ has inspired me to- to dig deep into every part of myself and discover things I never thought I would find there. You give me- you _show_ me the bravery to live my life on my own terms. That gold mask you tease me with, that’s still who I am, I like the control it gives me, especially here in court, but now I wear it because I want to, not out of fear of the consequences if I let my feelings show. I know I can be myself now, and handle those consequences damn well if I have to, because that’s what you do. Darius, maybe I don’t _say_ all of this often enough because it’s not in my character and I find words to be-... inaccurate. But you have to know how I feel. I followed you out here, leaving behind everything I had, everything I was, and I never looked back, never regretted it. And when you turn around, at Essin or in the thick of battle or on some far-out path in the Outlands or out in the fucking _void_ , I'm right there with you. And I will always be as long as you allow me to and don’t get _yourself_ argued into a knot - I heard you say that earlier too, thanks for that.”

A solid silence followed. Darius gaped at him, weight on his heels and shoulders back as if Ryou’s words had physically shaken him and then given him a shove. Men made confessions of love to others all the time in the Greek states, whether that love was sexual or merely an expression of deep friendship, often in much more flowery and extreme words than Ryou had used. Darius had had his fair share of declarations before, especially in his youth, that was certain. But he must have never expected anything like that from Ryou. The Greeks waxed poetical, Ryou used words like he used math.

Ryou took a deep breath, let it out in a huff. All his life and up until two minutes ago, he’d have thought saying something like that would leave him stripped bare, vulnerable and embarrassed. Turned out, they left him feeling stronger and more sure of himself than ever before, and also ever so slightly irritated. He sat straight as a judge on the edge of the bed, and looked Darius right in the eye. 

“Now that that is clear, I want you to tell me the truth: are you really alright with taking me back to Japan and never seeing me again?”

Darius looked away first. There was a pause as he walked stiffly to the window and propped his hands against the sill, staring out into the night. 

“If I thought begging on my knees would get you to come back with me, I would beg. And that's three words more than I've ever said to anyone in my life before too,” he added almost harshly. 

Relief finally washed through Ryou like a flood, and some of the tension it dug up and flung out seemed older and went much deeper than this current argument had gone.

“You don't have to beg, I'm already here. Why are we even talking about-”

“But that's the problem.” Darius rubbed his face again, this time the gesture looked tired, almost defeated. “You just told me how you left it all behind a year ago for my sake. You didn't have to remind me, I think about it a lot. I can't bear that burden, Ryou. It's been weighing me down more and more. Before I met you, I never thought much beyond the next battle, but now that the war’s over... and Leyam has granted me my name... now the path of my life stretches out further than I ever imagined in my youth. And I want you there every step of the way, of course I do. But then I remember all you’re sacrificing for that. Your good life back in your home of magic and wonders, all your kind and gentle customs - your _family_ , Ryou, your country-”

“But-”

“Don’t think I don’t notice,” he was told sharply. “All the things here that make you ill at ease. Do you know what it feels like for me when-... You turn your head away at each execution, even seeing that thief get his hand lopped off the other day made you go pale and _sad_ in that quiet way of yours. I can tell, you know, even if nobody else can. And I have dragged you into goddamn _battlefields_. Your country hasn’t had a war in over two generations and I put you in the middle of the worse conflict the Pariya’s ever seen and faced down the fucking _Roman army!_ And then the Ancients-”

“Now that wasn’t your fault, they were after me, you’re the one who got dragged-”

“You’d never have ended up beyond the void if you hadn’t stepped across the border for my sake.” Ryou got a look that was fleeting before Darius turned away again, fleeting but pained. “... You hate slavery. You hate goddamn animal sacrifice. You hate that Leyam can have a man flayed at a word. Your talk of courts of justice in your country made him laugh for a week, he didn’t even believe you were serious. You really want to tell me that you’re fine leaving your peaceful home behind? Your laws, your order, your children who all grow up strong and tall and- and live as long as oak trees? Not to mention your kin?” 

Unwittingly, Ryou glanced around. His room looked oddly foreign all of a sudden. It was about the size of his one-room flat back in Tokyo - how long since he’d thought of that place? What had even happened to it and his belongings, once Ryou stopped paying the rent…? Though they were the same size, everything else about them differed. Here, the room was considered small by palace standards because it was only meant to be slept in; all other life in Assyria was conducted in public or semi-public areas, while work happened in the markets or the sunshine-flooded room of scribes, where someone could take on the task of reading and writing for the noblemen. Ryou’s bedroom back in Tokyo had been sparse, tidy and very beige; here, his desk, bookshelf and the chests with his belongings cluttered the corners, overpowered by the walls and their riot of colors. Floor to ceiling murals providing visual entertainment and edification (though neither Darius nor Peistratos could actually tell Ryou the names of the men and women depicted there, they could only tell which gods presided over each scene thanks to accompanying symbology.) When he thought back on the Inlands, rarely enough these days, what he mainly remembered, beyond the immediate memories of conveniences and cleanliness, was a pervasive feeling of privacy, as well as its flipside, isolation. Whereas here… he didn’t even have a door to his room until the floods and the cold weather came, only a curtain, which, when Darius visited, would leave nothing to the imagination of anyone passing by in the outer hallway... but sex was something else that was not considered more than semi-private here, so he’d gotten used to it. He’d gotten used to a lot. This faint feeling of alienation now… he embraced it, proof he was no longer in his homeland, exiled from it and free of it too. 

“That was my choice and I stand by it,” he said, his gaze returning, clear-eyed and firm, to his lover.

Darius turned from the window and took three stern strides forwards, arms crossing. “It will truly be your choice once you've gone back home and seen your kin.”

Ryou licked his lips. “That's not a good idea,” he said, picking his words.

“They must think you're dead.”

“Darius… I’ve never talked much about my family, but please trust me when I say, they may be happier off believing that than knowing the truth. Or as much of the truth as I can tell them without them thinking I've become a lunatic. So between going back, turning their lives upside down and lying to them anyway before disappearing off the face of the earth, and just letting them think I'm dead-”

“Then it's not them I'm worried about, it's you,” Darius said abruptly.

“I told you, I made my decision with-”

“My father was murdered when I was eight. I never even got to see his body or put it to rest, he was buried by the royal eunuchs without a single woman to mourn him or a son to close his eyes and hold his hands together.”

Ryou stared at him, unable to think of a single thing to say. Noble features set in cold marble jarred in his thoughts. 

Darius scrubbed his hair, making the disks clink, such a familiar sound, a familiar scowl on his face as he looked away, glaring at a corner of Ryou’s room. “I don't know why I said that, that's got nothing to do with the subject. You're not going back to bury your father, Ashur protect him and grant him a hundred years of life, but… Ei, I don't have the ability to talk about such things as you do. No, I do not want you to stay behind in your country, be it as wonderful as the fucking fields of Elysium. When I think of never seeing you again - not even dead, but living and smiling and talking to- to another man in a place I can never reach you again - I hate it. I _hate_ it. But the thought of you staying here without having a choice, or saying a proper farewell to your father, that feels very wrong too. Ryou, you’ve risked your life countless times for me, you protect my brother as if he were your own... don’t you see it feels wrong for me not to do at least this much for you? Are you really that sure you don’t want to see your family ever again? I-...” 

Darius stopped abruptly as if hearing his own words. He scowled, gesturing as if he was trying to calm down a stamping horse. “Anza Dahak take me, Leyam said I was going to make it sound like an ultimatum, and I don’t mean that. If you absolutely don’t want to go now but you decide next flood season that now’s the time, I’ll still go with you, but I-...” he bit his lip, turned away, eyes narrowed and fraught. “I _will_ go with you,” he said, voice prowling around the corners of the room as he cracked his knuckles, “I promise you now that I will, come what may, I’ll wait for you to decide-”

“But since you think that once home, I won’t want to come back, it will be like a sword hanging over your head every single day,” Ryou interrupted in realization. He measured the way Darius was standing, shoulders taut and hunched around an ache with no definite origin, and he felt a sympathetic twinge in his own chest. This was why Darius had kicked down Ryou’s door (or rather, curtain) and _told_ him he was going back Inlands, why he had ambushed him with it and hadn’t planned on letting Ryou argue. Because Darius really, really did not want to do this, even though he felt it was the right thing, and he was afraid that giving himself or Ryou the time to discuss it would make it far too easy to let Ryou talk him out of it, his good intentions crumbling like the fortifications of a mighty city built on sand...

There was an unhappy turn to Darius’s mouth, though he soldiered on. “Something like that. Let’s just go. This _is_ a good time, I didn’t lie, who knows what can happen a year from now. Let’s just go and-... well, I won’t force you to stay if you don’t want to, you should know damn well by now I am in no way a good enough man to think that selflessly about you.”

“You know, abnegation is not all it's cracked up to be. I think we should have a bit less of it in this relationship.”

Darius looked puzzled but then waved aside whatever Ryou had said to focus back on the matter at hand. "So, are we taking you back home? I'm not frogmarching you there. I can't get across the border without you anyway. But do you see why I think you need to do this?”

“Yes, I'm going back to Japan,” Ryou said, finalizing a decision that'd abruptly come upon him while listening to his lover's gruff and unpolished words. 

Darius nodded, but Ryou saw how the strong fingers tightened over his biceps where he’d crossed his arms.

“I’ll be coming back with you, too,” he said gently.

Darius didn’t look away this time, but all he said was: “I hope so.”

“I will, Darius. But you're right. I think it'd be better for me, for us, and maybe even for my parents to get this behind us. To get some closure.”

Darius didn’t know what closure meant any more than abnegation, but he nodded to the tune of his own thoughts. “Yes. When the great storytellers sing their epics, the first and last parts are always leaving and coming back, like a reflection of each other. You brought me home a year ago, now I need to bring you back to yours. Break the chains of fate that bind us to those debts, and we’ll be free to forge new destinies.”

Ryou leaned back a little, propping himself up by the hands against the finely woven blanket on the bed. “Yes. Though you know I don't really believe in fate, I'm more of a chaos theory man myself.”

“Tch, don't blaspheme before this sort of trip or neither of us will make it back,” Darius muttered as he joined him. 

They sat side by side in silence for awhile. Near the door, one of the younger dogs from Darius’s pack scratched vigorously at something in its pelt, while Shamrosh continued to stare at Darius with big brown eyes full of love and watchfulness. 

“Well,” said Ryou. It was as if a lot of old cobwebs had been blown out of his head. This new feeling already felt like the chains of some fettering destiny falling away.

“Huh-huh.”

“I can't believe you were going to spring this on me tonight and then get me going the next day. Leyam is right, you are an ass.”

“Oi.”

“Got anything else to tell me?”

Darius rolled his shoulders in an uncomfortable way “... Well… you know the sisters? Shin-Arbat’s girls?”

“Yeees?”

“Leyam’s planning on telling you at breakfast tomorrow, so I'd rather you hear it from me first, but keep in mind I already told him no.” 

“This is going to be good. What, if I hadn't come back, you were going to end up marrying them both?”

“Marry sisters? That runs counter to custom, except for kings and we're all hoping I'll never get there. If you decide-... if you’d decided not to come back, I would have had to marry one eventually. Though she’d have waited a good number of floods if I’d come back alone, I wouldn’t have been in a marrying mood,” he added grimly. "But Leyam wants you to meet the sisters tonight, and he’s going to suggest something to you tomorrow before we leave. I think he's hoping it'll entice you back. He doesn’t understand why I’m doing this, he thinks I’m crazy, and he doesn’t want you to stay Inlands any more than I do. He loves you like a brother, you know, and he’ll throw a lot of talents on the scale to keep you here. I just don’t think he’s got the right inducement for you, but you tell me. You see, the sisters are said to get along well, and their family is rich and noble, a good alliance. So Leyam is hoping I'll marry the one and you'll marry the other.”

Ryou’s rising surge of affection for Leyam evoked by Darius’s words did a rather spectacular crash-and-burn. “Pinch me.”

“Sorry?”

“He seriously thinks-”

“I already told him no,” Darius said quickly, hands raised. 

So the betrothal they'd been talking about and which had sent Ryou into a tailspin had been his own?! 

“Of all the-... no, wait… In Assyrian terms, that makes perfect sense. I'm almost scaring myself here.” Men and women were on a different level, not incomparable for the non-misogynistic, yet not in the same orbit. Two male lovers marrying two sisters and becoming nearly brothers as a result, strengthening their bond and joining their families, made perfect sense. It would be seen by Leyam as the ultimate romantic gesture, as well as a really good bargain to make to a foreigner like Ryou without any concrete ties in Assyria. It truly was a generous offer and spoke highly of Leyam’s regard for him, even though it was, of course, exactly the wrong thing to suggest too. 

Darius was side-eyeing him carefully. “You'd be okay with it?”

“No.” Now that he was armed with all the facts, Ryou suspected Tupilla hadn’t been trying to warn him earlier, he’d only been trying to play matchmaker. Probably more for the sake of getting Darius married and squared away, but also as a favor for the King who obviously wanted this match too. Tupila was as shit out of luck as Leyam was going to be, though, even if the girl was beautiful, quiet, dressed in green and knew her poetry.

Darius grinned crookedly, a fatalistic shrug rippling the muscle of his shoulders between the decorative tunic. “I told Leyam his scale would come up short on this.”

“Really, is that what you told him.”

“Yes,” said Darius, already looking defensive.

“Haven’t you been telling one of these girls all about me, and my wisdom and my-”

“I keep forgetting how much this bloody court talks. To be fair, I was mostly answering her questions when I said all that. I happen to like talking about you,” he said grumpily as if this was something irritating to admit to rather than absolutely heartwarmingly endearing, “and she was curious. I don’t know what she sees in the stars, but she may well think she’s going to be married to one or the other of us by this time next year, and she’d know enough to understand how close we are. She’s actually not quite as annoying as many-”

“Still not interested.”

“Right.”

“But Leyam's putting pressure on you to marry. I suppose you still think it's abnormal not to.”

Ryou suddenly realizes how temporary he himself thought his position here was; like Darius only thinking as far as the next battle before, Ryou had never thought that far in the future. Why was that? It could simply be because he’d been in danger for a whole year; thinking too far ahead felt like begging fate to go ahead and jinx him. Or maybe it went back further than that, to a time when he’d known as sure as the sun would set that a man he loved passionately would always be ripped away from him, leaving him with nothing but dutiful filial obedience, a loveless marriage and a career in finance that would kill his heart until he couldn’t even feel numb anymore. Maybe that was why, when push came to shove, his trust in Darius’s feelings had fallen short, and he’d not questioned the gossip, rumors and assumptions as vigorously as he should have, even before his unfortunate eavesdropping on the king’s conversation.

Darius leaned forward a little until his elbows rested on his knees, hands loosely clasped before him. His eyes rested on the strong fingers that swung a sword and javelin to deadly effect. 

“… Don't have pretty words to give you in return for what you told me earlier. Let my actions speak for me. If you come back with me, I will never give you cause to go away. I know what you think on the matter of a man having both wives and lovers, so that will be that. Leyam will just have to get used to the thought that I will not have any legitimate children of my own as long as he survives me.” 

Ryou stared at him, stunned, as he realized what Darius was saying. An Assyrian man who'd never marry… well, it was a path Darius might have well chosen anyway, but he would have at least grabbed a concubine in his middle age and gotten himself a few sons. But an Assyrian man without heirs... Assyrians tended to think in terms of a family unit rather than individuals. Life was short, violent and tended to end abruptly, heirs were considered a natural extension of oneself. 

Darius caught the look on Ryou's face and snorted harshly. “It wasn't as if the legitimate children of a man born a bastard wasn't all kind of a joke anyway,” he muttered, looking almost uncomfortable. 

Ryou almost asked 'are you sure?' but what the hell would he do with the answer? He was going to leave his family in Japan, Darius was leaving the family he might have had in the future. It was harsh, but fair. If they wanted to be together, it was necessary. And it was for the long term, too. What they were discussing was the rest of their lives from now on… Ryou felt the room and its aggressively colored murals tilt and turn around him.

Something furry brushed his leg. Chamrosh wedged in between them and put his muzzle beneath Darius’ hand as if feeling a call to comfort and support. Darius gave the shaggy head a couple of rough rubs out of reflex, while his eyes slowly regained their focus. He glanced sideways at Ryou with a grimace. “Well, if it's a joke for me, it's not so much for you. Damn, but your father is going to try to kill me if you decide to come back with me at the cost of never marrying.” 

“Darius,” said Ryou after reflection, “my father has at least two or three considerably worse reasons to get mad at the both of us than my refusal to produce an heir.”

“Hmf, Deva Assa brings his bounties by heaps,” muttered Darius, the Assyrian way of saying 'well that's just great' “Hmm… I have my youngest fostered out in Nairoban. Dardan, his mother named him. Rand knows where he is exactly. The boy’s healthy, uncut and actually of my blood, all I need to do is bring him here and recognize him, and as for you, you can always adopt to pass along your estate. Would that satisfy your father?” 

This was a common custom in a land where so many children still died in infancy or turned out to be unable to carry a family legacy. What the President would think of Ryou adopting some copper-skinned urchin to live in unmarried bliss with his male lover made him chuckle a little hysterically. 

They sat side by side on the bed in silence for a minute, the only sound the thump of Shamrosh’s tail on the ground.

Darius let out his breath, "Ayah. I knew the day you said you wouldn't be fine, it'd be spectacular. Didn't expect it to be this, though. I thought it'd be something I can handle, like a lost limb."

That's what it felt like, thought Ryou, watching his warrior, his heart, his future, grumble to himself and scratch his dog’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This may well be the most romantic thing I’ve ever written (long-time readers will know what I mean.) I may need a bit of a lie-down now. 
> 
> Sorry for the marital bait and switch, but other than the tension and making the readers squirm, it served the purpose of ripping the mask off of Ryou's feelings, both in the immediate and those dragging behind him like chains for decades. Then Darius's feelings followed. Next chapter out in three or four weeks, when the voyage is undertaken (it was supposed to be two weeks, but then I remembered that I myself have a week-long voyage to undertake in the middle of all that…)


	3. Inland

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes! So sorry for the delay! The week off for a holiday and some rest was expected; the trip to the emergency room followed by surgery and a month of recovery was not ^^; All better now, though it took me some further weeks to get back into the writing groove. I apologize if this chapter is a little odd in the phrasing at places, I just wanted to get it out and into the swing of things.

Darius was still gung-ho about leaving the very next day, but Ryou put his foot down. That was not a good plan. That was, in fact, a terrible plan, and Ryou was not going to go along with it.

It was a whole fifteen days before they were ready to depart Sura (and a whole six days before Leyam stopped pitching ‘the loveliest flower of Armanne-Narradi’ to a thoroughly disinterested Ryou.) Ryou didn’t pack so much as a pair of spare pants until he’d organized a meeting with Haaskoning in order to open negotiations. Since Ryou was damn well going to come back - without any need for a matrimonial bribe, thank you, Leyam - it was crucial that he square this trip away with the top power in the Outlands and the owners of all the roads of Zaratusra, rather than hare off half-cocked, breaking all their rules and getting himself permanently exiled. And if the Per Gathas categorically forbade the enterprise… then call him Ryou the Assyrian from there on out, because if it was a choice between a mere goodbye to what he’d already left behind on the one hand, and his entire future with Darius on the other, then the choice was easy to make.

Truth be told, a tiny part of Ryou rather hoped Haaskoning would put his foot down and torpedo the trip, it would give Ryou a solid reason to call off the whole risky and potentially heart-wracking endeavor.

After official greetings and ceremonies, the leader of the Per Gathas joined Ryou in the Sun Room, the same where they’d met the first time around. The rigid murals of precious metals and gemstones were there to impress visiting dignitaries, but Ryou found the additional gravitas cumbersome as he pitched what he hoped was a reasonable request. 

Haaskoning listened quietly, looking grave and caressing his short beard. Then he stood up and paced the room while he gave his answer. It was a long answer, a good ten minutes, grave, mindful, and oddly well rehearsed. The reason for that last became apparent when the entire speech full of dire rules and warnings essentially boiled down to: “This is forbidden by our strictures, all interference between our two worlds should be avoided, there are very good reasons for this, but as long as you understand those reasons and follow some basic rules to the letter, since you’re going there anyway, may I give you a shopping list…?”

“You’re kidding me.” Ryou stared at the man, his forgotten wine cup in his hand almost tipping over until Darius absently reached over and righted it. “Are you telling me you people have done this before - do you do this regularly?!”

“Not regularly, not regularly.” Haaskoning fiddled with his medallion, glancing a little worriedly at Darius; quite needlessly, because this level of talks was held in English with the gift of Zaratusra suspended once again. Darius, who had of course insisted on being there regardless, glowered at the magian leader with faint suspicion and a complete lack of understanding.

Ryou snorted. “Here I was worrying for nothing… did I even need to warn you?”

“Very much so, and you did have cause to worry,” Haaskoning said sharply.

“What do you mean?” 

Haaskoning took another fretful turn around the room, with a swift glance at his assistant for the trip, a large dour woman who seemed completely uninterested in their parlay. Probably not an Inlander magian, Ryou was ready to bet, in which case she wouldn’t speak English any more than Darius did.

“Yes, we do occasionally - rarely - send our Inland people back for… various reasons. Our people, Ryou.”

“Ah. I’m still not joining you, Casper.”

“I wasn’t suggesting you do, however, we are going to have to keep this very discreet. Especially the reasons you are going.”

“Why?”

“… Doing a provision run is one thing. Letting someone who does not have our strictures in to see his family… this could create tension.”

“Others will wonder why I got permission, even though I’m not in the ranks, while they were passed over for an opportunity to go and see someone back home,” Ryou guessed.

“Ya, that is why,” Haaskoning sighed, his accent momentarily heavier. 

“Why can’t they go back regularly?” Ryou measured the despondency in Haaskoning’s expression, the burden. “Flight risk?”

“Yes. Or in some instances, we judge it will do more harm than good even if the magian is sure to come back. I believe you when you say that you have no intention of staying in Japan, or telling your family anything that will trouble them. Can you imagine that, instead of your parents, you had a wife and children back home…?”

Ryou’s mouth went dry, though the image that flashed through his mind was of himself with a different family, a different life. One where he’d been allowed more freedom, a life he might have shared with someone he’d met, maybe at university, maybe in the business world later, a man he might have loved just as much as Darius. If that had been the life he’d accidentally left behind... there would be no strictures in the world that would have kept him from going back, and his expression must have said as much, because Haaskoning sighed and shook his head.

“How do you manage to control Inland magians?” Ryou blurted out, not a politically astute question by any means. “Why do- why don’t they lead a revolution to overthrow the Per Gathas and all go home and-”

“Because most of them don’t really have anyone they want to go home to,” Haaskoning interrupted, though his voice was quietly firm rather than harsh. “And Outlander magians outnumber us a hundred to one,” he added almost under his breath.

“They-... most people don’t have anyone back home? How is that possible? Statistically speaking?”

Haaskoning shrugged. “That is, we do have men and women with families occasionally, but most magian are found quickly, and remember, we do offer them the one-way ticket back.”

“Oh. Right, I’d forgotten that. Uh, why does anyone stay then?”

Haaskoning let a short silence go by, his dry look saying eloquently, “Well, why did _you_ stay?” Ryou looked away, cleared his throat and then drank a sip of the sweetened wine.

When he spoke again, the leader of the Per Gathas politely passed over that moment. “A fair number of people do not take the ticket back. Like you, they find something here that they want to keep, wether it is the mystery of the place, the power, or friends they have made. More people stay than you think, more than can be explained by demography back home. There’s an idea, um, a theory that it’s not just our minds that put us on the path to the Outlands, but our hearts as well. Don’t make a face at me,” Haaskoning added dryly, well acquainted with Ryou’s thoughts on the metaphysical, the supernatural and the trite. “Call it a strong wish to be out of a situation, if the organ pumping blood around your body is not your choice, but however you say it, we do get many divorced persons, or _weduwe_ \- uh, how you say, people who are alone, who lost their partners, and also orphans and those with a horrible family.” He chuckled, eyes twinkling as the fine lines of crowsfeet around them deepened. “We are good at maths, Ryou, but you and I, we are hardly Einsteins or Foucaults. The greatest minds in math and physics, they all seem to stay on the other side, and I can only imagine they are happy.” 

“Not all are,” said Ryou somberly (as a young adult, he’d felt a kindred spirit towards Alan Turing for more than one reason.)

“It is a mystery why some come through the veil, and most others do not,” Haaskoning declared gnomically. “Either way, yes, I will allow this voyage. You will have rules. You will obey to them.”

“Obey your rules, of course.” Ryou had no wish to upset his parents with forbidden truths anymore than he wished to find himself exiled from the Outlands by the Per Gathas. 

“Good. We need to send a magian with you for safety’s sake, but it will be someone I can trust. I wish, that is, my schedule is very full, so, but perhaps, well, I wonder if I could spare the time, I hear Japanese cooking is the best.” There might have been a hint in those words, the faintly hopeful look thrown Ryou’s way.

“I am mainly going to see my family one last time,” Ryou said carefully, not wanting to be roped in as a tour guide when he had other greater concerns. 

“I understand.”

 

\---

 

Yaveu of Aksum, a big burly Hound with the scars of many campaigns decorating his bared arms and face, looked at the rusted remains of a tricycle as if it might bite.

“Are we sure it’s safe here?” Ryou heard him mutter.

Jexen told him he was the rear end of an ass, then he kicked the tricycle aside and shoved blankets into the man’s arms. “Go set up the blessed one’s beddings and stop lollygagging. Pardon, my lord, the man was born on a feast day,” he explained to Ryou (this meant, in Assyrian, that Yaveu’s mother had been so drunk when she pushed him out that he’d fallen on his head.)

“It’s okay to be worried,” Ryou said with some sympathy to Yaveu. “This is unusual for you, but the magian will protect you. The principal dangers here are mundane anyway. Men, mostly.”

“Them’s I know how to deal with,” Yaveu muttered, starting to set up the beddings in a way that left his sword arm clear. He was still scanning the scenery.

“An odd place, is it not?” Moennathin murmured in English for Ryou’s ears alone, the gift slipping from their minds with merely a touch so they could talk privately.

“Um, yes.” Ryou kept his voice way down. Moennathin was a Son of the Path and he obviously felt comfortable with the air of awe he inspired. But these men around them were Ryou’s friends, they’d travelled together and fought in campaigns at his side since before his arrival in Sura; he did not want them to look at him as a foreign magian speaking a magical tongue…

Moennathin took a few steps away from the group, looking around in the indifferent morning light. He’d shown up five days ago in Sura as their guide, and he’d led them through the borders and the Paths of the Per Gathas until dawn this morning, when they’d crossed over a barely-used route through the Outlands to reach a lone outpost, the Passer’s bewildered look suggesting he hadn’t seen more that many people in one spot for many a year. From there, Moennathin had helped Ryou locate his destination and break through spiral of the Outlands to this place, the borderlands where no path led. They’d found the playground after thirty minutes of scouting their location, and opted to set up camp there. The broken swingset reared up like a dagger that’d pierced the earth’s breast, the slide had fallen on its side, and the plastic dinosaur for very young climbers was so dirty, Ryou could no longer tell what color it had originally been. The tricycle wasn’t the only debris; food wrappers, boxes of flavored milk crushed into the ground, the arm of a doll, lay stranded about like the beachcombings of a sargasso sea. Everything was still; there was no grass swaying in the breeze, no birds flying overhead, no insects buzzing around the garbage - no organic garbage at all, the air smelled sterile and dusty.

“What exactly are these… ‘borderlands’,” Ryou asked quietly. 

Moennathin looked at him. The man had features that could fit right into Sura, but his eyes were a very light green, and he was quiet and tended not to blink overly much. He certainly lived up to the mysterious magian archetype, but Ryou could tell it wasn’t an affectation. Moennathin’s mind seemed to be elsewhere most of the time. 

Ryou took his silence for a prompt to elaborate, so he did. “The first time I came here, I ran into a mailbox with my car and then was chased by a Rajin Bher.” The green eyes flickered left-right and then centered on him again. “The second time I was being chased down by a motorcycle gang. With all that, I never actually had the time to look at the place and figure it out. What is all this junk doing here? How did it get here?”

“This is the final border. The edge of the Veil that separates Inland and Out.”

“...Yes? And?”

“It is like the dead skin of a snake,” Moennathin said steadily, staring with those unblinking eyes out over the landscape once more. His english was excellent, even if it had been mostly self-taught; much better than Haaskoning’s, though he occasionally mispronounced words subtly. “It sloughs. It is constantly changing, disintegrating and slipping away only to form again. Objects slip through, the lost things, the forgotten things. They finds themselves here, in this echo of the land beyond.”

“...Oh.” Ryou tried to imagine the physics and the maths behind that, and failed. So somehow the real world was shedding this echo? Fine, but this was real sidewalk they were standing on, real sand in the playpit, a real plastic dinosaur standing there looking forlorn and all but fossilized. Was this phenomenon casually replicating organized matter like a copy machine to make its ‘echo’? Even if it only seemed to work on buildings and metal, not living matter, that still broke so many laws of physics and thermodynamics-... ugh, it made his head ache just to think about it, it was like far-fetched science fiction (but not magic, because no.) 

That part was impenetrable to Ryou, but the next bit, he thought he got. The Outlands, the n-dimensional spiral: an ever-expanding spiral, and this was the start of it. A ruined knockoff, but it fed into the spiral very slowly until in a few centuries, this land would be unrecognizable. Even with modern civilisation’s leavings, the concrete would crumble, the iron would rust, the plastic would- well, no, that was there forever, but it would be buried in soil and dirtied beyond recognition… It would be one more empty land ready for potential colonisation, which, if people still trickled through from time to time, would make sense. New immigrants would need room. The spiral grew to accommodate them, though very, very slowly. The roads going through the layers had to be remade regularly as a result of that movement, but only every hundred years or so, according to information Ryou had gleaned in the halls of Asha Mayniu… it all made a faint tantalizing sense, though he was missing so much information still, on both the basics and the finer details, and not for the first time Ryou rather wished he could join the Per Gathas without all the political and social obligations it implied, just so he could get his math geek on.

“You and Lord Darius should leave soon,” Moennathin suddenly declared, looking at the horizon. “This is an auspicious time.”

They’d only just arrived at this spot, breaking through the spiral at dawn. They’d left Sura five days before that, traveling steadily and fast, only delayed by the whims of the portals through the Outlands. The playground lurking beneath the dull grey sky of an early morning was not all that appealing a campground, but Ryou still wouldn’t have minded staying there a day or two to rest. This was, however, Moennathin’s call. “Oh. Right. I’ll go get Darius. You…”

Moennathin looked around slowly to see if Ryou was going to finish that thought.

“You’re really okay staying here?” The Hounds needed a magian to watch over them in this shifting region, but it felt a little, well, rude to leave Moennathin holding the bag, especially after Haaskoning had made such a deal about the privilege of going back Inlands.

Moennathin smiled faintly for only response. 

“Right. Right. The Inlands are not really your home, I guess.”

The Outlander magians were totally disinterested in the Inlands, held it in superstitious fear even, and since Haasknonng had wanted to keep this in the family so to speak, Ryou had assumed the quiet man who’d showed up in Sura to guide them through the spiral would be from some nation back on earth. But no. Maybe there was no one on hand Haaskoning could rely on who wouldn’t be seduced with the idea of going Inland, or he wanted to keep this really close to the vest (Moennathin struck Ryou as someone who wouldn’t even know how to gossip.) 

Moennathin was a rarety; he wasn’t an Inlander, but his father had been. The man had hailed from somewhere in the middle east, and married a woman in the Outland country of Beotia where he’d been posted as a magian. Inlanders with the ability to pierce the Veil were powerful magian, but whatever it was that made them so was not genetic. Their children were only as good as regular outlanders, if they even had powers at all. Moennathin was an exception in being extremely strong, stronger than his father had ever been, one of Haaskoning’s shock troops and someone he trusted with not-so-legit stuff, it seemed. The way Haaskoning had described him when he’d left Sura a fortnight ago, Ryou had imagined that Moennathin would be some kind of Per Gathas version of Rand, but the image had gone ‘pop’ the moment he’d met this tranquil man with the green eyes that blinked little. 

“My home?” Moennathin asked dreamily. Then he tipped his head back. In the higher dimensions, Moennathin’s considerable powers flared and burned bright for a breath or two, and those eyes pierced infinity.

This was his home. He’d been born to the spiral. Inland would be insignificant to him when he had this mathematical wonder in front of his serene eyes every day.

“I’ll get Darius,” said Ryou, who liked his feet firm on the ground, however tantalizing the Outlands could be at times. 

“Are we going?” asked Darius, striding over at Ryou’s hand gesture.

“Yes, if you’re satisfied everything is okay here? 

“They know what to do,” Darius said curtly.

The next bit was mind-bendingly prosaic; rustling through baggages, separating out the items they were bringing with them, a last minute check on essentials, changing into the plain clothes Ryou had carefully selected for them before even leaving Sura. Jexen, looking grim, handed Ryou the packages he’d been entrusted with. Ryou slipped the three wooden boxes, each the size and shape of a small bento, into the cloth bag he’d acquired back in Sura. Tied with a decorative laniard, it wouldn’t look all that out of place in the modern world, as long as people assumed from that and his clothes that Ryou was an addict of homemade produce markets and craft fairs. Imagining what he looked like, Ryou found himself fiercely regretting his business suit and briefcase, discarded over a year ago near the Broken Lands… Banishing the thought, regret and memories, he slipped his wallet into the bag as well. He’d had to dig it out of the bottom of his cedar chest in his bedroom. His two credit cards, once premium, were so much useless plastic now, he was sure, but his driver’s license might come in handy, and it was still valid another eleven months. Hopefully he would not be needing his NHIC, he was going to do his utmost to avoid hospitals or any situation where he might need health insurance.

Darius unbuckled his bracer with a set air on his face, waited for Ryou to do the same, and then handed them both off firmly to Dio. He leaned over as he did so, said something in his friend’s ear. Ryou was pretty sure he overheard ‘-back to my brother, if-’. Ryou felt his tension ratchet up another notch.

“Are you absolutely sure you want to come?” he asked reluctantly when Darius turned towards him once more.

Darius didn’t even bother answering him this time as he slipped the pack onto his back and cinched in a strap for better ease of movement.

Ryou ran his palm nervously up and down the strap of his bag. He wasn’t going to talk Darius out of it, he didn’t even want to, but it felt as if he should. Darius wasn’t a magian, he hadn’t broken the Curse of Babel. Once past the Veil, he’d be like he was the first time around, unable to communicate. Their positions would be reversed, Darius would be the helpless one if they became separated. He couldn't even use his skills to forage for food, unless he figured out dumpsters quickly enough, and he couldn’t resort to violence. He'd get arrested before the month was out, and then he'd be as screwed as Ryou would have been had he lost Darius on his way to Essin. Maybe not castrated and sold into slavery, but in an insane asylum under sedation wasn't much better.

...This trip for closure had seemed like a much better idea back in his room in Sura, than it did now, with broken glass crunching beneath his riding boots, the dead air of the border brushing his face like cold fingers and making him shiver. He’d left Assyria five days ago on an auspicious afternoon, Leyam waving from the balcony above Ashur’s hall, a chant of good omen from an assembly of priests ringing out beneath the blazing sunshine and in the heat of the approaching flood season; here, in this silent unreal shadow of Japan, it was winter. 

“Are you dressed warmly enough? I don’t know how fast I can find us some-”

“Ryou, let’s go,” Darius said firmly but without annoyance. 

“Fine… Moennathin, we’re ready.”

Without a word, Moennathin moved closer to the center of the camp and closed his eyes. Then he nodded. 

“We’ll be back in three days,” Ryou said firmly, because Moennathin’s lack of ‘Be careful’, ‘good luck’ or ‘I’ll come looking for you if you don’t show up’ was throwing him off even more. 

But the die was cast, and if it had to be done, it should be done well and efficiently. 

“This way.”

The Hounds had chosen their campsite professionally. The playground gave them an open area all around so nobody could sneak up on them, and Darius had placed lookouts in a few of the ruined buildings overlooking it. The actual departure point was only three blocks away, though it felt longer as they walked, the sound of a camp getting set up behind them fading little by little, Dio’s voice ordering someone to be careful, the clink of pots being unloaded, the nicker of a horse, someone starting to sing to keep up their courage… it faded and then it was just their footsteps echoing through the ruins until it felt as if the apocalypse had come and gone, leaving them sole survivors. 

A burst of dust made Ryou cough and his eyes water. A stone skittered away from Darius’s boot and plinked against the plywood surrounding the construction site where their adventures had started over a year ago. The fence he’d burst through with his Nissan hadn’t changed, except now it was repaired. The ‘skins’ of the real world that sloughed off replaced each other regularly in shivers of reality that Moennathin called ‘realignments’, but which border scroungers called The Gods’ Madness. Ryou did not know what it would look like, to see one splinter of reality overwrite another, but if that’s what the bystanders called it, it probably wasn’t fun. Moennathin was here specifically to make sure the Hounds they were leaving back in their base camp were safe; he’d stabilize this area for the three days their trip should last. People sometimes slipped through the cracks in the world when chaos came a-calling. Or else something completely different could slip through instead...

The scenery had changed in the past year; the construction of the building, as glimpsed past the plywood and chickenwire barrier, had progressed, there were half-built walls around a basement of poured concrete, gaping open like a wound… but the rebars poking out of the building were pitted and rusted, the concrete was crumbling. Whatever phenomenon ‘copied’ the real world seemed to age it or wear it down somehow… Ryou might have had a hard time recognizing the place, especially in this smashed version of his home city, except that there was one thing here that hadn’t changed. It wasn’t visible, but he could feel it; it had led him and Moennathin here like a beacon through the last leg of their journey through the spiral. Over there, away from the construction site and its padlocked gate, following the street, close to a mailbox that was no longer dented but still derelict. There, in the middle of the intersection of two dusty roads. The only way he could describe it was, a scar throbbing in his mind’s eye: the place where he’d torn through reality here and stumbled onto Darius fighting the Bher Rajin. He’d made another two holes in the Veil in other spots of the city as well, but this was the location he remembered best that was also the most discreet. Reappearing in the middle of the street of a busy block not far from Yuki’s hospital would be stupid.

Ryou reached out with his mind, touched the scar tissue. It was faint, very faint, but it was there, and it knew him; the Veil shimmered in his mind’s eye, the scar pulsed… and opened for him.

He grabbed Darius’s hand and walked quickly forward, passing through the Veil. 

Ryou immediately hooked a right, tugging Darius along with him. This early in the morning was indeed an ‘auspicious time’, as Moennathin had put it, it left this part of Tokyo fairly deserted, but Ryou still wanted to reduce the chance of their arrival being spotted. Neither did he feel like getting mowed down by an early morning bus.

The intersection was fortunately deserted. Only one car moving, and it was over fifty meters down the road, heading away from them. 

“Right.” Ryou rubbed his head and the little pressure ache there, but passing through the Veil wasn’t as bad, mentally, as shooting a car across half the Outlands and into the Broken Lands. 

Ryou took in a deep breath, centering himself. He was here now. Now he had to be on the ball. He’d been thinking about this moment for the past twenty days. His earlier nerves had settled into steel resolve, he knew what he had to do. However much the smell of wet asphalt and pollution was making his head swim with sudden, fierce aching familiarity. A year ago, he wouldn’t have even noticed this smell…

“Okay. Well, country’s still standing,” he said curtly, covering the moment. He glanced at the mailbox, now hale and hearty, though it was to their left rather than behind them. The spatial twist was still a little disorienting. In lieu of a construction zone, a manga shop stood with weird, unnatural colors screaming at him from posters in the windows. Ryou took a careful note of the shop’s building number, along with the street name at the intersection, committing them to memory. From this side, Inlands, the scar in the world could barely be felt. Ryou buried a little niggle of fear that for some reason, the magic would stop working and they’d be stuck here. Come on, he’d done this several times already...

“Are you okay?” he asked without looking away from the shop’s overly loud window. Over a year since he’d seen those particular shades of primal colors and printed material...

Darius shrugged. “Been here before,” was all he said. 

And neither of them were big fans of waxing poetic over their concerns, so they should get on with it, Ryou decided. 

Ryou took off randomly to the left and walked a few blocks, looking around carefully. The clock over a small Taiwanese bank indicated it was 7:54 AM and 5 degrees centigrade, but at least it wasn’t snowing or raining. The bank was still closed, iron curtains barring access. Ryou stopped, reset his watch to the appropriate time, then continued walking. Darius followed in complete silence, it reminded Ryou of the first time they’d travelled together on this side of the veil. Darius was looking around, staring longer at any LED or neon blinking at him as if they were biblical burning bushes, but he said nothing, and his gaze jumped towards the newspaper vendor in the kiosk, the biker driving by, the taxi driver. Focusing on sources of potential threats rather than on magical mysteries.

Ah, there. A pawnshop less than two blocks from their arrival point; finding one so fast was not surprising, this was the right neighborhood for them. Ryou stopped and considered the items in the window. Hmm, no. It looked shabby, its display centered on old music instruments, records and furniture. It also had a card in the window indicating it wouldn't open until 11pm. 

A block further away, a larger street was flooded with a steady stream of cars, reminding Ryou of the flow of people up and down the market rows in the merchant quarters back home. Darius’ steps slowed until he was a couple of feet behind Ryou, then he caught up, shoulders squared and eyes fierce on the traffic. Ryou only glanced up and down the street. There was a shop that might be a pawnbroker over there, a couple of blocks away, but the importance of the street and the tidiness of its awning told him to look elsewhere.

It took some circling, and Ryou found himself back at that Taiwenese bank again half an hour later. They stopped for some rest, and Ryou had some tea from a tiny diner, using the few yen he’d saved from his wallet over a year ago. Darius took a cup as well, but only used it to warm his hands, he didn’t drink after the first exploratory sniff, and kept his eyes sweeping over the street, the small diner, the empty stalls, the one other customer present, reading a paper, and the small elderly diner owner, as round, wrinkled and incurious as a dumpling. They didn’t stay long.

Finally, four blocks away down a sidestreet next to a parking lot sporting three large American cars, Ryou saw his destination. Large, well appointed, with jewelry – thick gold chains – on display behind a metal cage. And if that wasn’t enough of a sign that this was the kind of place he’d been looking for, the presence of a few young street toughs lounging around outside would do it. 

Ryou led the way inside, Darius ignoring the young men looking askance at them, but tensing at the electronic ‘Ding!’ signaling a customer coming through the door. Ryou made his way through an alleyway made of brand-name speakers, some of them slightly dinged, and arrived at a pristine desk just as a well-dressed man emerged from a door marked Office.

The man bowed, introducing himself briefly and greeting them. Ryou returned the greeting instinctively, the words coming out so fast that the knowledge that he was not, as a matter of fact, actually speaking Japanese, couldn’t trip him up or make him stutter. He introduced ‘Darius Sirrian’ even more briefly, and motioned his lover to sit in one of the two seats pulled up before the desk. Then Ryou unpacked two of the wooden boxes from his bag, leaving the last out of sight in case it was needed at a later date.

The pawnshop clerk did not blink, flinch or evince surprised when he saw the dozen small gold oblongs nestled in silk within, but the way he looked up and scrutinized Ryou told the latter that this was not what the man had expected. In his job, he had to measure people as precisely as the value of their belongings, and Ryou probably looked like someone who had an inherited Rolex to pawn to overcome a shortfall in a small business venture, rather than a man who’d plunk down several million yen’s worth of gold contained in wooden boxes that virtually screamed ‘nope, no certificate, provenance or even a hallmark, deal with it.’

Ryou waved aside the man’s apology as the latter stood up and went to get a set of scales from a sidetable. Then he vanished into his office. Five minutes later, he reappeared with a kit which, when opened, revealed little bottles with eyedroppers and glass vials. 

With permission, the broker pulled on a pair of gloves, lifted out the first of the oblongs, scraped it, tinkered with his glassware and eyedroppers. 

Ryou wondered if Darius - staring at the man like a hawk - would notice the change in the latter’s demeanour. For a foreigner, it might go completely unnoticed, but for Ryou, even though he could not put his finger on what changed precisely, he could tell the instant the broker figured out just how pure the gold was. As it should be; half of it had been acquired by Ryou against some of his saved talents of silver, the rest was a gift from Leyam for his brother’s voyage, but all of it came straight out of the coffers of the palace treasury. 

Though he was now radiating respect, humility and politeness in an indefinable way, the broker still professionally tested all the oblongs, then he started to weigh them, totting up numbers on a calculator he’d pulled from the desk drawer.

Halfway through the work, the door went Ding! again. Darius had pulled his chair aside a little before he’d even sat down - after examining the aluminum and fake leather with puzzlement that had hopefully gone unnoticed. But the noise had him rising fluidly and standing to face the door. The broker froze and looked up in surprise. 

A man, older and thicker around the waist, dressed in an expensive business suit and an air of assurance, strode up to the desk. The broker leapt to his feet and bowed with a deferential, “Owner, sir.” Ah, right. Along with the kit earlier, the clerk must have made a phone call in the office. 

Introductions followed. The owner of the pawnshop took the seat at the desk and continued weighing, thick fingers flying remarkably easily over the calculator’s buttons, while the first man went to get some tea. Then he stood at the owner’s elbow, an echo, perhaps unintended, of Darius’s pose. 

They were three quarters of the way through the oblongs when Ryou caught some of the numbers adding up on the calculator, even upside down. He shifted in his seat. The owner instantly looked up, measuring. 

Ryou looked right back, keeping eye contact to the point of rudeness. Unless the Nikkei had done somersaults in his year long absence, the numbers he’d caught sight of were nowhere near the trading price of gold. Even allowing for the fishy nature of the exchange. 

“Everything alright?” Darius muttered from where he was leaning against the wall. 

That broke the unspoken exchange. The broker looked fleetingly at Darius, then looked again, eyes flicking and taking in more details, quickly but without staring.

“We have coffee if your colleague prefers,” the owner said, straightening up in his chair. 

“He’s fine. He doesn’t speak Japanese- or English,” Ryou added, an apology of sorts for answering in Darius’s place.

The owner turned fully to Darius and gave him a short seated bow as if apologizing for his inability to speak whatever idiom Darius came equipped with. Then he turned back to the scale and re-weighed the oblong he’d already done once. But Ryou could feel the man’s attention on his customers. No question was asked - it would have been rude - but Ryou answered anyway, since he at least was Japanese and he’d heard the unasked question loud and clear.

“He is from the Middle East. Bahrain.” Ryou had only the faintest notion of where Bahrain was, and he felt comfortable assuming this man was the same.

The owner’s eyes flickered from Ryou’s face to the gold in the boxes, then very quickly to Ryou and Darius’s clothes-

“We are not the principals in this exchange, we are acting as intermediaries,” Ryou said (since Darius might be a bona fide prince and all, but he hardly looked it.)

The owner bowed in curt thanks for this information and started typing again. The price of the last few oblongs weighed up was forty percent higher than the others, compensating for the previous shortfall. Though Ryou was never going to be bringing return business back to this place, the owner didn’t have to know that, and thinking they represented some rich Bahrain visitor couldn’t hurt in terms of both the immediate windfall of cash and in discretion. 

Finally the calculator was turned towards Ryou, who nodded acceptance. There was no negotiating here, which made it a refreshing change from Sura where Ryou was expected to barter for bread for breakfast if he wasn’t eating in his own quarters. Assyrians found a good round of shouting and negotiating to be invigorating. Ryou merely found it draining, and usually had to go out shopping with a friend or a servant if he didn’t want to get robbed blind…

Exchange made, forms filled in (somewhat creatively), and yens packed into neat enveloppes at Ryou’s request, they departed, bowed out by both the owner and his employee. The young men who’d been loitering near the door - protection bequeathed by the local powers in the neighbourhoods who would soon be playing Mah-jong nearby or enjoying the cafes and bars - were now gone.

Ryou started a running tally of money versus his to-do list, because a good accountant could run a budget even in these circumstances. They needed clothes and shoes for the both of them, so they could blend in. Pawnshop wares were bespoke or quality, too fine for their current requirements, he’d have had better luck at one of the regular shops they’d seen on the larger street. And after that, some ramen. He hadn’t even liked ramen before, only had it half a dozen times, yet for some reason he’d been increasingly yearning for it this past year… But first stop, some clothes so they could blend in.

Blend in…the thought of the young men around the shop drifted into his peripheral consciousness. A year ago, he’d have crossed the street or avoided the entire block at the sight of them. Today they barely registered, he'd tallied them and then dismissed them just as quickly. How they’d stared at him…It felt suddenly much, much longer than a year since he’d been away; a lifetime, the time to become a different person, one that could garner wary looks from a bunch of thugs and low rank yakuza types. A look of wariness, of weighing caution…also a sniff or two. Very surprised sniffs. The clerk had also stared at their clothes hard after he’d gotten close. Ryou shook his head faintly. Yes, most certainly, those small-time city predators were not used to seeing foreign soldiers redolent of sweat and horses…

First stop, clothes, second stop, some food, but before any further shopping occured, Ryou was going to find them a cheap hotel in the neighborhood, and book it so they could shower.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next chapter should hopefully be out in two-three weeks, if all goes well and my brain starts cooperating again. This fic has in fact picked up an extra chapter, since I wanted this trip back Inland to feel as realistic as possible. Which means they’re not Poof-ing in to go straight to the shopping district or Ryou’s parents, there are inevitable steps to take first.


	4. A Stranger in Tokyo

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A week late, but I had something else I needed to post first. Feel free to ping me any typos or incorrect sentences, my final review was a little rushed.

Lunchtime brought to the streets a small tide of people, walking with measured steps, politely ignoring Ryou as they crossed his path and then staring, startled, at Darius’s long hair, beard and strong foreign features. Ryou led on. His gaze bounced around building facades, snagging on signs, names, neon-glittering promises… his nerves felt both stretched and frazzled. Japan - his homeland, the place he’d been born - felt both heart-wrenchingly familiar and yet also very foreign in ways he could not explain. Could one feel both homesick and alienated at the same time…? 

Wait, where was Darius?

His lover had stopped and was staring transfixed at a shop window display ten paces back.

“Right. Pretty frightful, hm?” Ryou said, badgering his tired face into a smile as he rejoined him.

Darius continued to stare at the row upon row of violently colored plush toys. The shop had thought it advisable to stack them up against the window so that the entire display was a jarring rainbow attack on the senses, alongside some tinny pop music tinkling from speakers above the door. Good grief, what must the turnover rate for sales clerks be in this place?

“Darius? Come on.” He hoped Darius wouldn’t want to go investigate. Ryou knew enough about these kind of shops to know that the window display was the least questionable part. In the furthest recesses of the place would be the more adult version of dolls and toys, and Ryou was too tired to field the kind of question that might lead to… But now that his weary gaze focused, he noticed a few hand-sized female figurines in various costumes perched on the knees of some of the plushies. Oh dear.

“Are these animals you hunt?”

Ryou blinked, then fought to keep his voice normal. “No, they’re toys.”

“I can see that,” Darius told him, a trifle irritated as he stared into large plastic eyeballs. “But are they images of animals you hunt? How big are they?”

“Uh…” It occurred to Ryou that most toys in Assyria were as realistic as material permitted, and they were all - including the statuary for adults - meant to educate, illustrate or at least amuse. “No, most are made-up animals, like statues of satyrs back in Assyria.”

“Satyrs exist.”

“...uh, no, I don’t think they do.”

“Draxess of Aksum swears his father was one, and many of the Hounds have seen them.”

Or have friends who had seen them, or friends of friends who drank like fishes and also saw elephants dancing on the head of a pin. Ryou rubbed his forehead. “Come on, we’re still several blocks away from the hotel. And trust me, none of those animals are real. Except the bears, I suppose, and they don’t usually come in those colors.”

“...that’s supposed to be a bear?”

“Come on.” Ryou felt an urge to almost drag Darius away from the window display that made something itch deep inside. Deep, deep inside. 

… Echoes of past discussions ran through his memory. It hadn’t always been fraught with the President. In fact, bar that one regrettable incident with the housekeeper’s son and a couple of minor infractions, Ryou had always gotten along well with the man. He’d been the good son, the one the President acknowledged and treated as a man he could one day see becoming his equal. Ryou remembered talks with his father over tea on holiday afternoons, after Ryou’s mother finally won the silent pleading contest that enforced the no-business-matters-at-home rule. Talks of the direction of society, of the differences between the President’s city of the past and Ryou’s future Tokyo, and what it could predict for their generation. How the rigors of duty or the pathos of impermanence had been replaced with a culture that seemed as artificial as those plushies, as throw-away as fast food wrappers, as irresponsible as adults pretending to still be children and giving in to wild impulses… 

It was no mystery what the source of Ryou’s frittered nerves were, and it wasn’t a display of neon-colored bears.

“Were those small ones statues of household goddesses?” Darius asked.

“That depends who you ask,” Ryou replied distractedly. They had three days in Tokyo; on the last one, he would see his father. Until then, he had to stop letting the impending meeting weigh on him.

Ryou’s nose caught the scent of a restaurant and his stomach grumbled on cue. Food, then a hotel and some rest. Focus on that for now.

\---

Darius did not like the ramen. He didn’t say so, and he ate like a soldier who took the bounty he was given and did not complain, but it was obvious. It took him thirty minutes to get through the bowl, and only partly because he had to use a fork (plastic, kindly provided by the restaurant owner) instead of his hidden belt-knife and fingers… Then Ryou had to talk his lover through the use of bathrooms - in hushed half-words since people around them in the packed eatery would be able to understand what he was saying just as well as Darius could. Darius didn’t look enthused at the idea of using a mysterious object in a small room that Ryou would not be able to enter with him, but his suggestion that he simply ‘go in the alley outside’ was met with frantic headshakes. Ryou just hoped toilets were not going to be needed frequently in the near future... He had spent his first few months in the Outlands battling stomach complaints - and according to Haaskoning, he’d gotten off exceedingly mildly, to such a point that the elderly Per Gathas put Ryou’s iron stomach on par with his magian abilities in terms of stupendous. Noodles and sundry boiled in broth should be free of germs, but there was a plethora of other issues that could bother Darius in there. So far the only food he’d had in Japan had been hospital fare over a year ago. 

In short, it was urgent they find a hotel room and the privacy it provided. Ever since leaving the pawnbroker, Ryou had been heading in the direction of what he believed was his only discreet solution in the matter, and they were now only a few blocks away. They’d be there in half an hour, and fortunately they could get there without actually going anywhere near the bar, Shore. The bar Ryou had been driving away from over a year ago now, when first the Veil parted for him... Not that there was likely to be anyone there who would recognize him after all that time - not the Ujiie Ryou who sat in the darkest booth he could find and only spoke to four or five different men all told. But still, no need to take chances.

The hotel hadn’t changed, and neither had the clerk. Ryou didn’t know if this was a good thing or not. Had the police come looking for him here? Would they even have known he frequented this place? Ryou had never paid with a credit card anywhere in this neighborhood, since the President’s family might be audited at any time, he always paid cash, like he would today. 

The clerk didn’t say anything. The kind of men who stopped at his hotel, the ones coming from Shore and likeminded places around here, wanted discretion above all else. Well, that and clean rooms. The advantage of coming here was that Ryou could fill in the form, give his address (no longer valid, but who cared) and then simply exchange a long look with the clerk. The man’s eyes flickered towards Darius, and then he handed Ryou the keycards without asking the obvious question about the foreigner without a passport, residence card, address in Japan or proof of identity whatsoever.

Ryou still felt shaky when he got into the elevator. In any other hotel, at best they would have been asked to leave, at worst the police might have been contacted… How did criminals do it? How could somebody deliberately choose a lifestyle consisting of taking chances like this? Ryou, for his part, felt like his guts were trying to crawl out of his navel and run away in fright at the gamble he’d taken and how badly that could have gone. His life had been in danger in various ways in the Outlands, but though it had been horrendous in a way he’d never experienced before, it had also been fairly cut and dried. Fight or die. If you survived, you walked away without burdening yourself with any guilt or fear that might hinder the next battle, whether that next battle was days or weeks away or right around the corner. Here, in orderly urban Tokyo, the idea of making it onto the police’s radar and all the consequences that might have, made Ryou sweat like he was about to have a heart attack. The heavy click of the hotel door closing behind him was a relief, however illusionary its provided sense of safety. 

The room was hauntingly familiar; same furniture as other rooms he’d booked in this place before, same layout, same TV set that probably saw little use, same neutral wallpaper that mutely stood testimony as if to say, “all the things I’ve seen done here…” that had always made Ryou feel cringey and a little dirty on his previous visits, a feeling he’d always quickly washed off in the-

The shower!

Ryou kicked off his boots, dumped his bags on the first double bed and was in the bathroom with no more than a quick “I’ll go first.” 

It was so _white!_ Rooms were never white like this back in Sura. They’d be very hard to keep clean if they were, and besides, it was both custom and a matter of pride to decorate every flat surface with murals and mosaics whenever possible. The air felt hyper-aseptisized from the cleaning chemicals, the gleaming chrome pipes looked like bars of silver, and the moulded white plastic of the bath and shower arrangement were otherworldly miracles. Ryou fumbled with the faucet and got it running before stripping quickly.

Ahhhh… 

Ryou’s grasp of history and geography had been shallow before breaking through dimensions and time. He’d always viewed everything outside of Japan as being dirtier than his homeland, more so the further back in time you went. He’d read a book once comparing Europe and Japan at the time of the Shoguns that’d painted a pretty horrifying picture. Then he’d been dumped into an abandoned patch of antiquity without so much as a toothbrush. It had taught him a few hard truths, such as how unimportant hygiene was when your belly was achingly empty…

Sura, when he’d finally reached it, hadn’t been too bad by the lowered standards of a once-fastidious Japanese businessman who’d had a realignment of his priorities. In fact, Sura was probably quite cleaner than many a city throughout the modern world, because every scrap and human waste was removed by slaves or ragmen, and in the heat, people washed pretty obsessively, and wore perfume and clean clothes as often as they could afford. Even the toothbrush thing had sorted itself out, if not entirely to his satisfaction. The entire Pariya was an orthodontist's version of hell on earth, between usure due to grit from the mills in the bread, teeth lost to fighting or disease, and just the basic lack of straightening most modern countries took for granted. But as for dental care, most of Ryou’s acquaintances did their best, fastidiously chewing leaves or small soft sticks of cedar wood after eating to clean food out of their crooked teeth and scent their breath. And bathing! Bathing was a _thing_ in Sura for the upper classes, a daily pleasure and a communal affair; people held business meetings in the pools and chatted with old friends in the saunas. It could take an hour or more, rinsing off the dust, rubbing in oil to loosen dirt, then scraping it off with a wooden tool, rinsing some more, using glutinous sap in the hair and rinsing that off, before finishing off with a long soak. It was agreeable most days, it wasn’t bad at all. It wasn’t _this,_ though. It wasn’t the harsh hiss of water, the heat biting the skin, or the unctuous feel of soap and shampoo. The smell of them - oh! Highly artificial yet achingly familiar, even if Ryou hadn’t used this cheap a brand at home. He stood in the rising steam, the water trickling off of him and feeling like it was taking away more than sweat and grime…

He had to kick himself out in the end. Darius would want a turn; they’d been on the road for five days, coming here, with only cold streams for a quick rinse. Ryou wrapped one of the large hotel towels around his waist, put the other over his shoulders, before stopping, intrigued, to evaluate the gesture. Strange how the habit of concealment, of propriety, had come back instantly even after a whole year of walking around in clothes that covered him considerably less than these towels at times. 

“You can have the shower now.”

Darius was sitting on the end of one of the beds, back straight, hands on his thighs, examining the room inch by inch. He must have been doing that for the past twenty minutes of Ryou’s indulgence. “I can have what?” he asked without turning around.

“The shower. It’s-” 

Ryou gestured behind him and caught himself mid-motion. 

The faucet of the shower, with its temperature indicator, looked like incredibly complex machinery all of a sudden. The bright lights around the mirror shone like the blinding sun compared to candles, the mirror was an unreal surface reflecting an alien room without any concession. Ryou stared at himself, realizing with a start how long his hair had gotten, and how much thinner- no, how much more sinewy his body and face had become. 

“...Now that I think of it, you’d probably prefer a bath… Are you okay?”

Darius looked around in wide-eyed surprise. “Hm? I’m alright.”

“Are you sure? This must all be quite overwhelming to you.” Good god, he’d dragged his lover forward three thousand years in time, and the only thing he’d been worrying about was how well Darius digested the ramen. Total lack of empathy there, Ujiie-kun.

But Darius gave their surroundings the blase look of a well-travelled soldier. “I’ve been here before.” It was almost a sniff of disdain.

Ryou let out a shaky breath, feeling a trickle of relief. “Yes, I suppose you have. I should have asked you sooner, but you seemed okay. More than okay, wow, you’re taking all this in stride better than I did when we landed back in the Outlands.”

Darius burst into a loud, sharp laugh, fortunately short but it rang out in the small room like a roll of drums. Ryou’s Tokyo-dweller instincts to not stand out or bother the neighbors had fortunately dulled in Sura, so it didn’t make him wince too hard. 

“What? What’s funny?”

“You are. You, the demi-god who rode us past all attackers in a chariot of silver and steel and threw us halfway across the Outlands, and then barely blinked an eye for the next year. The man who-”

“Oh come on. You have to know just how scared and out of my element I was.”

“A little, perhaps, I realize this now, though I was as blind as Tiresias to it back then,” said Darius easily. 

Memories of those first few weeks roiled through Ryou’s mind, a chaotic mismash picture of confusion, shocking revelations, completely alien customs and scenes, people dying and trying to _kill_ him-... but he’d had the control his father had bequeathed him back then, he’d kept most of his reactions well concealed. But remembering the complete bewilderment, that feeling of having absolutely nothing familiar to cling to, made him frown and scrutinize his lover’s face. “Are you sure you’re okay? We can stay here this afternoon, get some rest, maybe give you a break. All this, it must look… I don’t know, like-”

“A land of magic and wonders, but as I said, I’ve been here before,” said Darius with a cavalier shrug of his shoulders. At the end of the gesture he slipped off the straps of the pack he was still carrying and dropped it onto the synthetic green carpet. He’d imitated Ryou earlier and removed his boots at the door. 

“Actually it’s-... wonders, perhaps, but it’s not magic, Darius.”

“Hah!” rang out again.

Ryou scrutinized Darius’s frankly incredulous face. “I know this is all strange, but I told you how cars work - sort of - and-”

“Right, right.” Darius dismissed cars with a wave of his hand. “But as for the rest, please, allow this humble soldier to be amazed by the gifts of your land’s magic.”

“Uh, what are you wondering about specifically?”

For answer, Darius half-turned and poked the shopping bag he’d put down next to Ryou’s on the bed beside him.

“Plastic? I know it feels strange to you.” Darius had picked it up earlier and then dropped it like it was a live snake, probably because of the feel of it. 

Darius snorted. Then he said, in an artificial sing-song way: “For then we entered upon a house like a sparkling gem, and in this place were thousands of clothes fit for princes, spun upon magic looms so that whichever you reached for fit the man whose hand touched it-”

“Huh? Uh, no-”

“Flowing like silk and yet as warm as lamb’s wool-”

Ryou’s mouth stayed open around the first word of explanation about prêt-à-porter wares, but seeing a UNIQLO’s gleaming neon-tube-adorned shelves filled with what did look like identical clothes… Ryou could see how that would look like a fairy tale come true to Darius. He’d probably missed how Ryou had gone straight for the large sizes and checked them by eye, getting the fit right thanks to a good knowledge of the body he had in his bed most nights. 

“Where were those clothes made? On the looms of the daughters of Enki?” Darius asked with only a part of irony. 

“China, mostly.” Ryou caught a trickle of water down his temple with the towel before it could reach his cheek. He took a few steps towards Darius, examining his eyes, his face for signs of strain the man might be hiding. “I’m sorry, I know you insisted on coming, but I can’t- there’s nothing I can do to make this any less strange or stressful.” Ryou sighed, looking around. Had this room really seemed familiar when he first came in? Now the digital clock on the nightstand looked like letters of fire in an unknown tongue, changing at the will of some fickle god; the TV distorted the two of them in shades of gray; the bedclothes were a smooth unknown material that had never seen a loom or a weaver’s touch; objects of unknown purpose lurked around the room - the phone, the ballpoint pen on a pad, the unlit lamps, objects that bore not even a superficial resemblance to their far-off ancestors used in the Outlands, if they existed at all… 

Ryou’s brow was creased in distress. “There can’t be a single thing in here you recognize.”

“There’s you,” Darius answered, looking up at him and nothing else. “Always.”

Ryou’s breath caught in his throat. It spilled out a second later against the firm lips his mouth had captured. 

Darius’s hm? of surprise transcended into a growl of satisfaction, Ryou felt it thrum in the chest his palms were pressing, it made him shudder under his stupid towel. He had one knee up on the bed, not that he remembered putting it there, his body pressing against Darius as much as it could, shivering for more. Hands fastened on the terrycloth across his back, massaged the muscles there, firm and calming; it brought him realize how frantic his kissing was, as if everything he felt and wanted to say was coming out all at once and everything was important, everything had to be given to this amazing man _now_. Ryou took a shuddering breath and kissed Darius again, more slowly and deliberately this time, then he kissed his neck in that little spot just before the beard started, then lower… A hint of tension in the strong shoulders released beneath his fingers. Ryou kissed him again, longer, while his fingers brushed hard muscle, an unflinching chest, a perfect body beneath the dowdy clothes that tried to reduce it to anonymity. Then Ryou sank to his knees. 

A sharp indrawn breath, anticipation as much as surprise. Ryou’s reached for the belt while Darius shrugged out of his rough-spun brown top. No words passed between them, none needed. A random Japanese thought about showers passed through Ryou’s mind and it made him fumble the belt buckle in his haste to reach Darius, to taste the familiar skin, the hints of sweat and dust and horsehair, of olive oil and spices, of home… Darius shoved down his trousers until his hips were bare, loosened and slipped down the padded clothes he wore to protect himself beneath them. His cock was only a little hard at this point, but Ryou had good cause to know that soldiers went from zero to sixty with little provocation and in the most extreme circumstances, even stranded here in a world of magic and marvels. The flesh swelled beneath his lips and tongue right on cue, and Darius let out a puff, before whisking the towel away from Ryou’s shoulders and tossing it aside. Firm hands, hard fingers, kneaded his shoulders, his back, his neck, forcing him down on the firming erection the way they both liked to do at times. Ryou loosened his jaw and throat and used his tongue, relished the feeling of movement in his mouth, of growing strength and power. His groan was echoed above his head, the fingers wove into his hair and gripped. He knew Darius was looking down at him, eyes fierce and bright and unembarrassed, aroused by the sight. Ryou had seen this sight before too, in a room much like this, maybe even this very one; a head in his lap, his fingers gripping someone’s neck- but the picture meant nothing, it was gone as soon as it came, because even if the surroundings might be the same, they didn’t feel the same, they were alien objects of marvel and magic all around them and this was Darius staring down at him hungrily, encouraging him, Darius, his only lover for over a year now, his future, his life, his- his everything, always. Ryou’s right arm anchored around the muscled waist, the other helped bring as much pleasure as he knew how, pulling on hardened flesh, ghosting over the testicles and perineum, dipping up into his mouth to add a rub of thumb to the work of his tongue. Darius groaned low, a noise teased out of him. The seemingly unrelenting grip of fingers relented immediately when Ryou moved his head, giving him a range of motion now to go to town. The hand settled gently on his neck, shaking a little with pleasure and passion. Ryou shuddered, let go of Darius’s waist to reach down, rip the towel away, put fingers on the still-damp skin of his own erection.

A foot kicked his thigh where he was kneeling. “None of that. That is my harvest to reap, lion. After you finish me off.”

Ryou would have grumbled if his mouth wasn’t very full by now. Even as his hands returned to their present duty, he still managed to make a somewhat grumpy noise, and Darius snickered, breathless and low, and curled forward to kiss Ryou’s hair as the latter lifted his head to work more of the tip of the cock emerging from its sheath of foreskin. 

There was a sniff somewhere above Ryou’s crown.

“You smell funny,” Darius whispered, voice choppy and distracted. 

Grapefruit-scented shampoo and conditioner, thought Ryou, unable to otherwise answer, then he made sure Darius was no longer preoccupied by anything other than Ryou’s mouth. With a groan, Darius crumpled backwards to lie on the bed and let Ryou do with him what he will. 

 

\---

 

The clerk ignored them very professionally as they made their way out the door, but it was obvious he was drawing conclusions about what they’d been doing. It was, after all, what most men who came here did. A year ago, Ryou would have felt that knowledge singe on his soul, leave a mark that wouldn’t fade for months, at which point he’d have found himself drawn inexorably back to the Shore again, and this hotel afterwards. Today, with a year of semi-public sex under his belt, including in a tent in the middle of an army, Ryou felt like his soul was made of steel and highly unsingeable. It put a bit of strength in his stride, a little lightness as he took the steps down to the sidewalk. And Darius would be even tougher; Ryou didn’t ask him yet again if he was okay, leaving the hotel after only a couple of hours of rest. Darius had been through a hell of a lot worse than Tokyo after all, and was liable to get antsy without anything to do and no weapon to sharpen after more than half a day. Ryou let his shopping list lead them out of the hotel by mid afternoon. If he wanted to be sure to get everything done, there was no time to waste. 

First stop was literally next door, a small out-of-the-way jewelers advertising clock repairs. Ryou watched them change his Seiko’s batteries, before buying a dozen spares and a small jeweler’s screwdriver to match. On a purely material plane, the Seiko was pointless. Clocks were rare and useless luxuries in Sura, everybody told time by the sun and its associated dials, or by the tromp of feet of patrols changing every three hours. But Ryou couldn’t bear the thought of no longer having his watch around once he got back home. It wasn’t nostalgia for modern society, so much as a small relic of control over his life, of exactitude, of something that was quintessentially _him._

While in the shop, he bought a few kanzashi for the women he knew back home… as well as for Leyam, who would certainly get a kick out of wearing, in his wigs, the gaudiest one Ryou could find. The shop didn’t have very good ones, in fact it looked like a display meant for tourists, which, considering the out-of-the-way location, was a bit optimistic on their part. Ryou would have eschewed them once upon a time, but now the strident artificial colors of the bargain silk and even the traces of glue visible beneath some of the pleats would make them completely unique to the gifts’ recipients.

After leaving the shop - Darius giving the artificial bell an unfriendly glance as it Dinged! them out - Ryou went hunting. They took a bus to a different area he was only familiar with for having driven through it each time he went to Shore (further reducing the chance of running into anyone who knew him.) It was a busy shopping district, but the kind several levels below the high-end downtown versions of same. In one of the small shopping complexes, he found a store selling glasses and advertising free drop-in eye exams. Perfect. 

The saleswoman took the frames he’d picked, the sturdiest he could find, along with his prescription as she talked him through some options for the lenses. 

“They will be ready in an hour if you would like to come back, sir,” she concluded, putting the frames and prescription in a small tray to carry into the back of the shop. Ryou’s quick indraw of breath stopped her. “Anything else?”

“Ah. Yes.” Ryou kept a tight control over his features, looked her right in the eye, making her tense a little. “I would like to buy more than one pair. With the same frames, though.”

“Oh, that’s no problem-”

“And with different prescriptions.”

The saleswoman turned fully away from the back of the shop to face him, startled. “I beg your pardon?”

“I would like to buy a dozen pairs of glasses, each with a half increment increase to the strength of the prescription in each eye.”

The saleswoman’s jaw dropped. Her job probably didn’t include many curveballs other than the occasional fussy customer.

“But- but why-”

“I’m going abroad for a good number of years for work purposes,” said Ryou, letting his voice sink a little. “To a place where reliable eyecare is not available.” 

The saleswoman’s surprise was immediately tempered with a good dose of sympathy for Ryou’s banishment from Tokyo to some unnamed barbarian land. 

“I’m sure that wherever you may go, there has to be some available-”

“No,” Ryou interrupted, voice even lower now, “I don’t think I wish to rely on that.” And if this made him sound like an insular jerk who only trusted his own country’s produce, then that was better than being discovered as a weirdo who was about to flit off to another dimension. 

The saleswoman’s gaze flicked to Darius, sitting in a chair near the door. What conclusions she drew, Ryou wasn’t entirely sure, but in final she decided to facilitate his extra purchases rather than argue some more. That many eyeglasses would not be ready until tomorrow, but that was no problem, so Ryou paid up. Ryou now being the oddest object to have ever been in his shop, having him pay for such a large order out of an envelope full of cash barely made her blink. She headed with her small plastic tray to the back of the shop and Ryou went to get Darius and tell him to stop pulling on his khakis like that. Even if they did feel tighter and stranger than the usual tubes of woven cloth, belted at waist, knee and ankle for fit, that Darius was used to when he wasn’t just wearing a skirt or tunic. 

As they left the shop, Ryou briefly considered pushing his good luck and seeing if he could get glasses for Darius too, but there were two major barriers to this. The first was, it would be complicated to get Darius to take an eye exam here, in Japanese. The second obstacle was Darius. Ryou decided to put a pin in it for now. They’d be back here tomorrow, he could try to argue his case then. 

Next door to the shopping complex, Ryou found a Korean dentist who could take walk-in patients, though not today; they were busy and the office was closing in an hour. Ryou booked an appointment for the next morning. Then he rushed to the nearest pharmacy before they too could close. 

He wandered the aisles with a metal basket on his arm, unsure and feeling a little harried all of a sudden. There was undoubtedly a lot he needed, but he didn’t know what… In the end, he bought several packs of antibiotic ointment, a couple of bottles of pain relief pills, and a dozen boxes of antidiarrheals and sachets of electrolytes that could well save his life or the lives of those he cared about some day. He also found a suture kit and a first aid manual, tucked amongst the bandages and splints. He rounded up the basket with two dozen toothbrushes and toothpaste, and a _lot_ of boxes of vitamin pills, including children tablets. He had Darius’s indifferent permission to give them to Dardan, Darius’s son, if and when Rand found the boy and brought him back to the palace. Ryou was feeling rather weirded out about that whole aspect of the future, truth be told (what exactly would he, Ryou, be to the boy?) but one thing was certain: if Darius was giving up the possibility of having other heirs in order to be with Ryou, the latter would ensure that the one living heir Darius did have would stay that way. 

Exhausted, they headed back to the hotel, Ryou grabbing some cooked chicken and pesticide free vegetables and fruit at a supermarket to eat at the hotel rather than risk another restaurant. Tomorrow he would pick up his glasses and see the dentist, have the man check him over, maybe come back the next day if needed to change the three fillings Ryou had. He could try the ‘I’m going to a foreign country where I can’t trust the dentists’ tack that’d worked on the eyeglasses saleswoman. He had other things to shop for as well tomorrow, and then after that-...

Ryou forbade himself to think more thoroughly on the ‘after that’, and went to bed with Darius, curled up on the latter’s left side even though there was no sword at hand this time, ignoring the occasional noises from other rooms and focusing on the future that existed outside the next three days.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Final chapter should be out in a couple of weeks.


	5. Light Many Candles

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oops, that took longer (again), and still rough. Life's been busy, but I did want to get this out there. Last chapter, enjoy :)

“Nobody talks to you here.”

Ryou looked up distractedly from the address he was jotting down. “Hm? What do you mean?”

“Nobody talks to you,” Darius repeated. “It’s very strange. It is like you are shunned.”

Ryou examined him, puzzled. “What do you mean? I talked to the young man behind the counter.” But since he’d been paying for an hour of screen time in an internet cafe, maybe Darius had thought the incomprehensible conversation - of which he could only understand Ryou’s half, at that - was some complex magic spell that allowed the odd flat lamps to glow.

“But nobody else talks to you. Not the man who stood next to us in that chariot, nor the guards in the tunnel.” 

“I’m rather glad those policemen didn’t ask me anything, actually.” Ryou had sweated bullets as the two-man patrol in the subway had glanced their way and then stared at Darius a fraction longer than Ryou was comfortable with.

“The people here, they take your money but they refuse to bargain with you, they do not ask you anything that you have to answer. Not with anything other than yes or no. They do not ask you where you’re from-” (good grief, I’d hope not, thought Ryou) “- about your lineage, your place, or where you’re going. Back home… back home, a man treated like this would leave town by the end of the day, certain he’d accidentally defiled a temple or insulted a noble ancestor, and the garrotte was coming for him with the fall of night.” 

“Oh. Well in this case, anonymity means the opposite, it means safety. It’s a different country than Assyria.” 

“I can see that with my own two eyes.” Darius was looking around the busy cafe, people all bent over their screens. “It’s… strange. It’s like seeing many of you, all of them-... closed.”

Ryou was about to object - that young woman over there was smiling over a forum post - however seen from Darius’s eyes and compared to the norm of Sura where people tended to let emotions and words echo loud…

He didn’t want to downplay or dismiss Darius’s remark, however. This was the first time Darius had expressed something like unease, but Ryou had felt it accumulating since they’d arrived.

“I know it seems unusual to you, but this is our norm. And it’s not that we don’t communicate, it’s just that a lot of it is non-verbal, subtle. A stranger would miss that. Anyway, you understand, even if the man in the street doesn’t spend his day talking to everyone he meets, this doesn’t mean anything. Actual conversation happens mostly with people you know, friends and family.”

The last word fell like a lump of lead in his stomach. It was the afternoon of the second day. Tomorrow… tomorrow morning, Ryou was going to descend upon a walk-in clinic he’d found online, that provided quick appointments for vaccinations, in order to get a shot for everything he could get including a tetanus booster. He’d already picked out the country - Ethiopia - where an imaginary NGO was going to send him for an emergency engineering job on a dam, explaining his need for prevention of yellow fever, diphtheria, cholera, anything and everything the clinic could and would give him. He was going to do it at the last minute, on the day they left, in case his data entered into the Central Health Database triggered an alert somewhere. He didn’t know enough about law enforcement in his own country to know how they might or might not find him. Neither did he even know if the police were looking for him, more than a year after he vanished alongside a stranger who’d assaulted a policeman and disappeared.

No need to take chances. He’d get his shots, and then-...

The lump grew larger.

Then he’d go see his family.

With the discipline that characterized him, Ryou forced his attention back on the computer. He’d done his research and had the clinic’s address. Many of the shots he needed either required a course of boosters, or would only work for a number of years, but better a little than none. From what he’d read online, the traces of immunity afforded years from now, coupled with his general caution, hygiene and overall good health, should keep him relatively safe. Now for Haaskoning’s shopping list.

He’d been worried the requests would be something impossible to obtain, like antibiotics, or even illegal, like weapons. But in the end, all he needed to do to fulfill his obligations was to go online. He’d been tasked with checking a few email addresses, the names and passwords written in jarring anachronistic contrast on a piece of vellum with a nib pen. They were full of bank statements, for the most part, and notes of automated subscription renewals for magazines alongside forwarding address renewals in Europe. Ryou noted the bank statement sums on the piece of vellum using a ballpoint pen provided by the cafe. He noted down anything else unusual. Then he went to several sites using the accounts he’d been provided, to order magazines and literature to be sent to a drop box near Amsterdam, all of it related to the latest advancements in maths and physics. Haaskoning would send someone to the drop box in ten days’ time to pick up what had been ordered. They had their own connections to obtain such things as medicines, Haaskoning explained. Ryou would have been tasked with getting all that too if he’d been anywhere near Europe, but since he was in Japan, he could only trigger the sending of the required scientific literature, and someone else would have to come back to pick up his slack, possibly Moennathin.

Ryou conscientiously logged out of all the accounts he’d logged into, then he stared at the browser. It wasn’t the National News pop-ups that occupied his thoughts (he’d checked a hotel newspaper last night, and with tensions here, a minor conflict there, some political rumblings, it was almost as if he’d never left.) 

Should he check his own email account…?

Of course he wouldn’t. Most of what would be there would now be irrelevant, and what was not irrelevant would be-... He didn’t want to see year-old pleas from his family, begging for him to get in touch, for any news at all.

The lump in his stomach grew hard, jagged spikes.

Damn it. 

Tomorrow. It would be done by this time tomorrow. 

“Come on,” he said softly to Darius, who’d been staring in fascination at the mouse Ryou used to click away the browser. “Let’s go back. I want to, um, let’s get some rest.” And find distractions in each other to pass the time until tomorrow.

 

\---

 

He had the taxi drop him off a block away. He wasn’t sure why. 

Walking through the streets full of old-fashioned houses in this quiet area of Tokyo was like a dream. He could barely feel his feet as they brushed the sidewalk he’d walked as a child, as a teenager, as a young man. There was the building that had once been a post office and was now a corner market. He’d bought magazines and food there on occasion. There was the hairdressers that all the neighboring ladies used. Like the rest, it was well-off and yet discreet, as if ashamed to show more than it should of itself, as if the whole neighborhood wanted to pretend it was still a hundred years ago, and that modernism, enrichment and change had merely happened elsewhere. This was an area of old, rich families, not the very oldest or the very richest, but near enough. Ryou wondered in a beat of panic if any of the neighbors would recognize him, and found he’d lowered his head instinctively, burrowing his chin in the collar of the coat he’d bought two days ago. The air was damp and cold, it smelled of pollution, wet concrete and old memories.

He turned a corner and found himself on the familiar street. This right here, this stone wall, was the one encircling his home, he was an arms’ length away from the grass he’d played on as a child, from the trees he'd sit under to read when he needed solitude.

There was a van in front of the gate, which was open. Ryou stopped abruptly, heart hammering. A voice he didn’t recognize said something about cutting back the bushes next week.

A howling pit opened beneath his feet starting with “Do my parents even still live here?!” and going down to the bottom of his soul.

“Thank you,” said a voice, and that one he recognized, it went straight to the heart of his childhood.

His feet had started all on their own, carrying him forward. Past the iron gate, past the odd-job man and gardener he knew by sight who was heading in his direction with a rake, looking at him in shock and surprise. Past that little curve in the path where a burst of pussy willows grew in the summer, cut back now for winter and wrapped in plastic. Past-

His mother, a dark blue woolen coat thrown over her shoulders, had been heading back towards the door when she glanced back, alerted by the sound of footsteps and the odd-job man’s hesitant “Um.”

For a moment, a mere moment, her eyes settled on his features with nothing more than surprise that two strange men were in her front garden. Then she blanched and swayed.

“Ryou?!”

“Mother.” Ryou half bowed, the dreamlike feeling intensified (how many times this past fortnight - this past year - had he imagined this happening and now this moment had arrived, this was real this was now and this was-)

The gate closed behind him, the odds-job man (Ogusu, that was his name) making a run from a potentially awkward situation involving one of his richer clients.

His mother stared at Ryou, eyes and mouth wide, still frozen in that one moment of shock. Then her hands flew up to her mouth and she looked about to cry. 

“You’re back! You’re alright- you’re back! You’re alright!” 

Ryou went up to her, gave her an awkward hug. He wasn't sure she even noticed, she was still in the same rigid stance, staring at him as if she was afraid to blink. 

“Mother. I’m glad to see you again.” Oh god, what had he come here to do…? She thought he was back, but he wasn’t, not for good- No, keep it together, Ryou. “Um. Is father here? Is Yuki? Can… I need to, uh, can we call Yuki and see if he can come here? If he takes a taxi - or can I meet him somewhere near his hospital? I need to, ah, I need to-”

His mother finally seemed to come back to herself, her mouth going limp as she stumbled over words. “Oh, oh, Ryou, Yuki, he’s away, he’s in Seoul- oh, oh, I have to call him, i have to-”

“Seoul? What’s he doing in Seoul?” Ryou asked blankly.

“Oh, oh, oh, some kind of- of-” his mother made a gesture with her hand, equally limp, she seemed like she was about to melt into a puddle on the cobblestones of the front garden. “Some kind of- of- he’s gone for ten days, some kind of conference. I’ll call him, I’ll call him. He’ll be- he’ll be _so_ so very- so very- oh Ryou!” Her voice was getting choked.

“...I’m sorry, mother. I worried you.”

“Oh, oh, oh-” his mother’s hands flew around like butterflies, as if she feared that the very evidence of her distress might bring more, might frighten him away, “it’s alright, we’ll make it alright, we’ll-”

His mother’s voice faded in Ryou’s mind. Something. On the edge of his peripheral vision.

There was an old bamboo fence and gate leading from the front of the garden to the back. 

His father stood there. 

He was wearing the lighter business suit that he usually wore at home; it was Saturday after all. He must have been in the garden, inspecting the gardener’s work. He was staring at them and his face was expressionless. His lips were thin, though, there was obviously emotions there, severely reigned in.

Ryou’s mother stopped talking with a little sound like a small animal going into hiding.

“Father.” Ryou bowed. It felt less awkward now. For some reason, the dreamlike feel had evaporated, and he was a hundred percent here. Here and now. 

“Ryou.” His father’s head didn’t move an iota. Only his mouth did. 

Finally the President broke the stillness to move forward. A slow, strong stride, at an angle away from Ryou that inevitably stopped at a few feet in front of the door.

Silence. Immobility. Until Ryou moved forward, a petitioner. Darius - he’d almost forgotten his lover, but Darius was there, following him two steps behind.

His mother was now behind his father. He hadn’t seen her move, it was as if she was a ghost who’d faded out and in again. She had her hands clasped in front of her, she was staring anxiously from lowered eyes at the way the President had his arms crossed, at the set of his shoulders, at Ryou's expression. 

Ryou stopped a few feet away and met his father’s eyes. “Greetings, father. I am glad to see you’re both well.”

A faint flair of the President’s nostrils was the only reaction that got him.

Silence, thick and knotted. Not even a ‘I’m glad you’re still alive’, hm? Okay then. 

“I am here to talk. We have some things to discuss.” Ryou said the words like he was reading from a script, they were empty meaningless words, only there as an obligatory bridge to get them past this immediate territory of sterile gestures to the place where real, meaningful words dwelt. If he was allowed passage, that is. 

Silence was his only answer, stretched out like a chasm. 

Ryou felt something in him go cold and hard. Fine. Fine, apparently he had to lay it out. Even though he already knew, right now, where this was going.

“May Darius and I come in?” he asked stiffly. 

Eyes flitted towards the subject, for only an instant - cataloged the stranger and then put him aside for now, returned to Ryou, scrutinized. Analyzed. Concluded.

"That man is not welcome here."

Ryou’s heart stopped - then remembered Darius couldn’t understand what the President had said. 

He took a breath. "Father, please let us inside so we can discuss this."

His father didn’t deign to answer.

A little behind him and to his right, Darius shifted, words quiet. “Ryou, I can wait here if you-”

Ryou didn’t answer verbally, but he reached out blind, found a rugged hand and held it hard. Darius fell silent, then he took the step forward that brought him fully up to where Ryou was standing. Darius preferred facing his problems head on. 

The President did not appear surprised in the slightest, nor particularly put out. 

Ryou realized he was fine facing his problems head on as well. "Did you call the police before showing up at the gate?" he asked.

His father’s eyebrows twitched at the bluntness, his gaze twitched.

“No, I can see you did not,” Ryou concluded. “Too messy, I suppose. Very well. May we please come in, Father?”

The President made a face, an expression of disgust. “Aren’t you too old for this behavior? You,” he added, addressing Darius directly now, “do not know what kind of enemy you have made.”

“He doesn’t speak english.” A blank look from Darius confirmed it. “One last time, father. I’m not going to tell you about a year of my life and my plans for the future standing on your doorstep. Will you let us in?”

His father’s neck stiffened, his nostrils flared like Aangad’s when the horse scented the smell of smoke from a battlefield. “No, I will not countenance this ridiculous phase of yours,” said the Go master, putting down his stone at the far edge of the territory he was in fact aiming for. Ryou wasn’t shoddy at the game, but he could never beat his father. 

But this wasn’t a game, and Ryou’s life had depended on his wits and his ability to read entirely foreign people, culture and set of circumstances in the past year. The President’s strategies were as clear as if he’d scritched them out on the sidewalk with chalk. 

… In this strange clarity, Ryou came face to face with the fact that his father didn’t care a fig who Ryou brought home in final, and the main emotion riding behind the stern fury of wounded pride and anger was, above all, concern. He wanted Ryou to come home, to resume the responsibilities and trappings of his life here as if nothing had happened, because that was the only way his father could control this situation and keep Ryou and their family safe, safe from the world, from Ryou’s bad decisions, from Ryou’s own wild impulses. The president had known with one glance at the way Ryou was holding the gaijin’s hand that the trappings would not fit anymore; his tidy, well-kept bonsai of a son had burst its bounds and grown into a disheveled irrepressible tree. A good hard pruning was in order if anything was to be salvaged from this situation.

“You will come to your senses, leave this stranger at the door, and come into my office. There is a lot we need to discuss in order to keep you out of jail and avoid dragging our family name through the mud.” Each word was a strike at everything Ryou had once held dear. 

The President’s eyes narrowed as he realized his attack hadn’t produced the effect he wanted, or any for that matter. Ryou still looked at him calmly before trying again.

“Father. We do have a lot to talk about. But since this is the line in the sand you chose, fine. Darius has saved my life repeatedly, he’s welcomed me into his family and his home, he’s promised himself to me in a way you can’t even fathom, and he’s put himself at risk to come here just so I can have this talk with you. Are you saying you won’t even do us the courtesy of letting us both into your house? You’re going to insist I leave him outside like- like he’s not even a part of this?”

The President didn’t even bother to give Darius an affronted glare. His eyes never left Ryou as he crossed his arms, the expensive suit crinkling at the elbows.

“Very well then.”

Ryou let go of Darius’s hand so he could put his arms at his side and bow. “Thank you, father, for raising me into the man I am. I wish you good health and fortune. Don’t worry, you won’t see me showing up with my foreign friend again. The family name is quite safe and I’ll be perfectly fine, whatever you may think. Goodbye.”

The President’s features did not twitch. They were very alike, or they had been at one time, rather; he had not expected Ryou to meekly cross the line in the sand without any other form of pressure applied. Ryou, for his part, wasn’t making a cock fight of it. If his father couldn’t see right now that it was hopeless, that his paltry ultimatum had no power over Ryou anymore, then there was not enough time in this trip to wear him down and get him to see the truth or listen to the explanation of what was really going on. He’d hear it all through his own prejudices and that was that.

Ryou turned, took Darius’s unresisting hand in his own and pulled him in the opposite direction of his family home. Darius took one numb step to follow and then tensed, half turning back and tugging at him. “Ryou, wait, tell him!” he hissed. “Tell him that we mean no insult- and that you can adopt, that-”

“That’s really not the problem,” Ryou whispered.

“Ryou.” His father hadn’t moved, and without looking, Ryou knew his arms were still crossed. “When you realize what you have done, do not come to this house. You will contact me through Takashi-sensei, he will arrange a meeting in a private room at his law firm. You will obey his every instruction. When I arrive, you will show proper contrition, and then we will discuss how to get you out of this sordid mess without endangering your family.” 

There was a steel promise in his words. Ryou vaguely wondered what mortifications his father had planned for him. The penance he was planning was in no way there to stroke the President’s bruised ego, no; it would be for Ryou’s benefit, the necessary first steps of breaking him and taming him so he could once more, in the far future, be the obedient man his father knew he could be, the son the President could protect and lead to a bright future of power, wealth and ultimately control over his own destiny and household one day. It was so foreign to Ryou’s current life, and so sad, that Ryou’s breath caught in his throat, but he didn’t turn around. His path was, literally, in another world now and utterly beyond what his father could comprehend or, more importantly, accept. Even if Ryou stripped away all the elements that would sound like drug-induced schizophrenia, the baseline of “I am going to a primitive country where I will be heavily dependent on my new family and friends for survival from now on, I’ll be constantly at risk, I’ll be lucky to see the age of sixty, and every day I have left I’ll feel more alive than I ever have in my life’ would not be something his father could ever accept.

_“Ryou!”_

The classic tableau, worthy of any Noh scene of Father And Rebellious Son Parting Ways, was shattered by that cry. Ryou jumped and half turned. In his peripheral vision he saw his father’s arms uncross and make a grab, but his mother slipped by the President and ran, stumbling, after him.

“Ryou! Don’t do this! Please listen to your father! You can come home, of course you can! Please don’t go!”

This was infinitely worse than his father slamming the door in his face, and Ryou hated himself, truly and utterly hated himself now, because for a minute there he’d completely forgotten about her, standing stock still in his father’s shadow. The President, who’d undoubtedly forgotten her as well, was staring at her, and though he kept on the mask, he was undoubtedly furious at a woman’s begging that attempted to one-up a man’s decision.

Ryou’s hands were on his mother’s shoulders. His father had never lifted a finger to her, but he’d left her bruised and bleeding inside with harsh words or raging silence the very few times she'd disappointed him. Ryou felt the alien and lunatic urge to pick her up in his arms and run off with her, take her back to Assyria and treat her like a queen, protect her- ridiculous. Harmful. He was only torturing himself. Beyond all the massive impracticality and the fact it’d be utterly against her will, she’d die far away from her roots as surely as he’d been thriving. 

She was crying, not a few tears but big gulping sobs. He had never seen her do that before. She hadn’t cried a long time ago when a trusted housekeeper had been fired due to her son’s lack of judgment, she’d fully supported the President’s decision back then that had separated Ryou from his crush by putting all the blame on the latter. She’d always been on the President’s side, a pale shadow of his orders, just one more of Ryou’s wardens; what she was doing now seemed completely out of character, and it occurred to him that unlike her husband, she might have actually seen just how changed her son was, and realized that if he left, he really wasn’t coming back.

“Goodbye, mother,” he said, giving her a hug - her head reached his shoulder, he’d gotten the President’s height as well as the character. The only thing he’d gotten from her was the shape of his eyes, which he hardly ever saw in that much detail anymore, the quality of mirrors in Assyria being what they were… “I will be fine. I love you, I always will.” He felt her quiver. She was amazed to hear that. He was amazed he’d said it, but it was his last chance to do so, and that put an urgency behind the words that blew away all notion of reserve. “You still have Yuki. But mother, you both need to let him be his own man, or you will lose him too. Be well.” He kissed her temple and hugged her, and let her go, stranded shivering on the paving stones near the gate as he walked away. 

The steps behind his were hesitant, dragging, until Ryou reached back without looking, found a strong hand and captured it with his own again, leading Darius away.

They turned a few corners, walking back towards the direction of the main street two blocks away. There would be no taxi around at this time of day there unless they were very lucky, but there was a bus stop that would get them back to an area with a subway, and then- 

Stopping short of the bus station, Ryou propped himself up against a wall out of sight of the two waiting commuters, and let out a shaky breath. He finally looked up at Darius. His lover was staring back the way they’d come. He was angry, that much was clear by the flare of his nostrils and the narrowed eyes, but it wasn’t the usual bright ferocious anger Ryou was familiar with. Ryou frowned, trying to figure out what that look on his lover’s face meant, trying to find words to-... trying to find words.

“That didn’t go the way you thought it would, I bet,” he finally said. His lips felt numb and his fingers grasping Draius’s hand were cold.

“…No. I expected to be about as welcome in his house as Pyrran was when he bought Dargamenon his daughter back, but-...” Darius lapsed into a thick silence.

Ryou snorted. “That’s what you expected? Didn’t Dargamenon lock Pyrran up for five years and threaten to castrate him? You thought _that_ was how it was going to go?” It was easier right this second to fish out one of the many, many tales he’d heard from raphsodes at court this past year - pretty much the only means of evening entertainment outside of drink and plotting in Sura’s palace - than it was to think about the last twenty minutes. Then Ryou frowned. 

...In the tale, the daughter - Mellysea? Melly-something - was taken by the young hero Pyrran from a temple near her uncle’s home, and he’d brought her back to her father a year later, heavily pregnant. In true Assyrian form, it was completely unclear just how much consent or agency the poor girl had had in the matter - and if this was based on a true tale, it would be a girl, probably all of thirteen. That wasn’t what Dargamenon had been angry about, though, it was the insult to his house when Pyrran dared to bring back damaged goods and expect the old man’s blessing.

“I expected him to have his men come out and beat me like a slave, yeah,” Darius said vaguely, thoughts visibly elsewhere.

“Darius… none of that back there was about you. My father doesn’t think you harmed me in any way, he’s at least giving me the honor of believing I’m responsible for my own decisions.”

“Oh?” Darius broke his staring contest with the far end of the road to give Ryou a hard searching look. “Didn’t get most of that back there, but seems to me you’d have been welcome in your house if you’d left me out in the stables with the horses and the dogs.”

“He’s sharp enough to know I wouldn’t do that, he was just making a point.”

Darius’s mouth tightened to a thin line and he looked back with that dark expression on his face polluting his anger. Indecision? Remorse? Regret? It was an alien expression to the man and Ryou didn’t like it.

“Didn’t Dargamenon give Pyrran a bunch of impossible tasks to accomplish before he forgave the insult and let the guy marry his daughter?” Ryou asked drolly, a hand reaching to touch Darius on the cheek and turn his face his way. “I don’t think we have time for that kind of crap before Leyam expects you back in Sura, my lion.”

Darius blinked rapidly as if he’d been poked hard by something he couldn’t see. Ryou used endearments considerably less frequently than Darius did. Then he shook his head and his usual expression came back: iron will. 

“Come on," he said, taking Ryou by the hand on his cheek and hauling him away from the bus stop. “Come on, I tell you,” he snapped as Ryou calmly resisted. “You have to try again, explain I mean no insult to you or his name, that you are my equal and will be a prince back in Sura- Ryou, it is wrong to leave it like this.”

“Leaving it like this is our only option,” Ryou said quietly. “It will be okay. This wasn’t for him, Darius, it was for me. He’s also his own man and the master of his own decisions, and I will do him the honor of respecting them too. He’s seen I’m alive, and that I’m not, oh, on drugs or anything, that I’m healthy and know my own mind. The rest is just- it’s just confusion. It won’t help either of us. Leave it. It’s fine. They’ll both be fine in time.” As fine as anyone could expect in the circumstances, which was not very much, but he would not lay that burden on Darius’s shoulders; Darius had done everything in his power and more to give Ryou’s parents a chance to see him again, to meet him halfway. The President had refused, and Ryou’s mother, for all she was heartbroken, would ultimately stand by the President’s decision, and there was nothing more to say. 

Darius stopped tugging at him, still facing the end of the street with a bullheaded expression on his face like he wanted to march his armies on Ryou’s family home, lay siege, enter the place as a conqueror and force the President to the negotiating table. Ryou smiled and tugged at his hand gently, and Darius looked back, taking in Ryou’s expression. Reluctance to quit the field turned to resignation, acceptance. He let Ryou pull him to a spot behind the bus stop, hand still in his. A car passed by the road, then another. A neon light in a pharmacy window indicating that it was open blinked on and off as they waited in silence for the bus.

“...He got any enemies we can kill for him?”

“Not as such, dear, and leave it, it won’t change anything.”

\---

Darius’s stormy expression was compounded by his dislike for the bus, the way the brakes had screeched at them and the doors had whisked open with a whistle of compressed air. Ryou led them way to the back, ignoring the odd looks his lover garnered, and found them a seat as far away from others as he could. The bus hissed, lurched forward, and the street leading towards his one-time home fell away. Ryou stared blindly at houses and shops. 

He’d missed Yuki. It never even occurred to him that this might happen. Should he leave a letter? Saying what exactly…? He was leaving his brother behind, his _brother_ , and Ryou was never coming back, this- this lack would never be made up for. A squalling baby brought home when Ryou was young, a moody teenager, memories of a laughing little boy (very rare memories, he’d been pissy even as a child, but somehow that made the good bits stand out more.) And now… nothing. He’d never see the kind of man his brother would grow up to be, the woman he might marry, the children he'd have, his nieces and nephews… Ryou would be an unknown to them, a sordid family secret only overheard rarely in the dark corners of family meetings, never discussed out loud. 

For an instant, the barest flicker of an instant…it wasn’t that Ryou was tempted to stay, no, but he could see how Darius had believed he would be. 

But it was only for an instant. It wasn’t just Darius he had to return to, he had friends back in Assyria that would fight and die for him. He’d never had friends like that here. And Leyam- well, Leyam’s existence in Ryou’s life could easily rival Yuki’s in both depth and complexity, to put it one way. And there were more friends to make back home; Assyrians made up in personal connections what safety net they lacked in their society. When someone fell on hard times, a whole web of family and friends stepped forward to help. This necessary interconnectivity had appalled Ryou’s misanthropic self to start with, but he suddenly found himself looking forward to it.

His thoughts turned towards home. His real home, the place he’d thought of as home these past three days: his room in the Prince’s wing. With the garden right outside, leading to the gate out to Sura and its noisy market, the alleyways he knew now, and the people who’d nod and bow and smile as he walked by.

“When I get back home, Darius, there are things I want to do.”

The words startled him, they were like their own entities that had left him without conscious volition, but sure and steady for all that.

Darius, wedged into the small seat and bracing his arms against the plastic armrest to steady him against the swaying and sudden stop-starts, looked around, scrutinized Ryou’s expression. “Write a letter to your father? I suppose the Per Gathas could-”

“I am going to be talking to some people in Sura. I am going to be looking into the abolitionist cause.”

From the stunned look on Darius’s face, this was a world removed from what he’d expected Ryou to say.

“I’m not going to upset anything. You know me, right? I’m rational to a fault, and I refuse to do more harm than good. But it’s…” Ryou nibbled his lower lip, looking for the right words, then he smiled crookedly. “It’s my right as a free citizen of Sura to participate in open discussion, right?”

“I wasn’t going to deny you-” then Darius trickled off, as if realizing that hadn’t been the import. 

“Bloody Greek way of thinking,” he mumbled instead, trying to hide some inner confusion, Ryou thought.

“Indeed. If they’d known what kind of mess they’d bring, your ancestors would have burnt the Free Cities and all the Greeks to the ground, but there you go, we live with their failings,” Ryou said with a grin, echoing word for word one of Leyam’s frequent theatrical exclamations on the subject. 

“You know you won’t actually change anything, right?” Darius pointed out, ever practical. “The Cennanites have been at this idea of abolition for hundreds of years.”

“It took awhile to abolish slavery Inlands too and they move a great deal faster than Pariya countries do,” Ryou answered philosophically. “I probably won’t see the results myself, but I’m damn well going to try. And-... well, I’ll try. I’ll work at different things.” After all the efforts Darius had taken for his sake, to bring him here only to witness that scene in the garden, Ryou was not going to upset him further, not right this minute. But it was a fact that Ryou believed Assyria could use a boost in its citizens’ democracy, even if it would partially undermine Leyam’s rule in the long run, or more likely, Leyam’s grandchildren...

It was like a fire through his veins, though. A door in a wall he could finally open, even if he would do that measuredly, quietly, but with conviction. Assyria was now his country; it was Ryou’s right and his obligation to try to make it better. Slavery, women’s rights (sorry, Darius, Ryou would definitively be talking to that small group of Greek's he’d met in the palace and that his lover had termed ‘the furies’), reformation of the justice system, what else… since he could not be too ambitious in the scope of changes, being a realist, he could at least spread things around. He wasn’t about to start a fire, but light a lot of little candles and see how long they might burn... 

The bus lurched to another stop and Ryou shelved the long term future for the immediate of remembering where to get off. 

 

\--- 

 

Near the mailbox on the street intersection, Ryou looked around, situating himself. The road was quasi deserted; only one car up ahead, headlights on now, which would soon sail past. The two of them would leave as soon as it was out of sight. 

With strange clarity, Ryou realized the direction of the setting sun was the same as his family home, and it seemed strangely symbolic, like a mural from Sura’s palace aligning willy nilly unrelated elements, times and signs to form a story more than a mere representation. Ryou faced the sun and bowed again, deeply from the waist. It felt like a long time until thoughts had trickled to where they needed to go, and his final ties to his birthplace, his homeland, were severed. Despite all he had to look forward to and all his strength, he felt strangely vulnerable and adrift right now, the finality of this moment solemn and momentous. 

Darius was looking at him when he straightened. He was frowning, concerned, picking up on some of Ryou’s feelings. He looked so foreign again, with his wild hair, his copper skin, the hawk-like gaze. I really was out of my mind to think my father would let us in the house, thought Ryou with a sudden twitch of humor. But he was glad, he found, that his parents had _seen_ this man, that he would live on in their memory when they thought of Ryou; this man who meant so much to him that he was gladly stepping away from his family, his country, every ease and convenience of modern life, every safety net and obligations. 

“I love you, Darius,” Ryou said quietly. Then he smiled at Darius’s look of surprise and confusion. The car had turned down another road up ahead. “Come on. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Done! Now, I have one more arc that's half written and well-plotted out, bar the ending that's fighting me. To give a small hint slash spoiler, let's just say that Ryou's not quite as done with his family as he thinks he is... I have no clue when it'll be out, probably next year if my current writing tempo is anything to go by ^^; Hopefully inspiration will strike soon. A huge thanks for all the lovely comments!


End file.
